


Looking into the Heart of Light

by lastdream



Series: Burial of the Dead [1]
Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftercare, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Temporary Character Death, Developing Relationship, Dom/sub, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I promise it's not that sad, Light Bondage, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Multiverse, Orgasm Denial, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Recovery, Symbolism, Symbolism everywhere, Topdrop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8004913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark of Earth-616 has deleted his brain to save his friends from Norman Osborn. Bucky Barnes of Earth-199,999 has gone back into cryosleep to save people from himself. Neither of them much expects anything to happen afterwards, but instead they find themselves together in a dream-space between universes. They quickly find that they are not alone-- here, the monsters and demons that haunt their minds are on the outside, and they want blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking into the Heart of Light

**Author's Note:**

> This is my work for the 2016 winteriron bang :D I had the pleasure of working with two different artists, and both of them did fantastic work! The artwork is by [Caz](https://cazdinal.tumblr.com), and [bohemu](https://bohemu.tumblr.com) made a playlist which can be found [here](http://8tracks.com/bohemu/convalescence). Definitely check them out and leave them a little love, too <3
> 
> At one point, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get to the 15k minimum. Turned out I had nothing to worry about ;) The title is taken from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and in particular the first section, Burial of the Dead. I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> The temporary death is 616 Steve, for people who don't know comic canon. The "mentions of suicide" tag doesn't refer to anything that happens during the story. Check the end note for a better explanation of that if you want, it's not a spoiler.

Bucky closes his eyes and looks at all of the destruction he has caused, all of the pain that follows him around when he leaves the ice. He looks at the people who have been hurt because of him. He looks at the monsters sleeping just under the surface of his mind, ready to wake up when their masters call.

Bucky opens his eyes and looks at Steve. One last reassurance that Steve is okay, even though Bucky knows he really isn’t.

Steve smiles, rueful and reluctant, and Bucky closes his eyes again.

The ice covers him.

 

*

 

Bucky’s body is frozen, but his mind drifts. It wanders off, beyond the glass sheened with ice crystals, beyond the walls of the Black Panther’s palace. Beyond the walls of the world.

Half conscious and half unmoored, Bucky dreams.

 

*

 

He finds himself in a wasteland. He cannot see it, exactly, nor touch it, but in the way of dreams, he knows that it is there. He knows that the air is bitter cold and the sky is bleak, and that the ground is soft with what may be rust-red dust or the finest white powder of snow. It might be both, he thinks. He knows that it is cold.

Bucky knows that this wasteland goes on as far as the eye can see in every direction.

He cannot see in the way he has always thought of seeing, but he finds it easier to think of it as seeing anyway. He thinks of this world in concrete terms, and it becomes concrete before him.

His mind feels clearer than it has in years, the cobwebs of a thousand wipes cleared out of his synapses to leave his mind feeling open to him in a way that is foreign and terrifying and wonderful.

He still does not know whether the ground is red or white.

He knows that he is cold.

He knows that he is not alone.

 

*

 

It is the feeling of eyes on his body that makes Bucky aware that he is naked, but no sooner has he become conscious of the vulnerability than he feels some approximation of clothes melt onto his body. They are white, or maybe red, like the ground, and they are shapeless in the most literal sense. They are neither flattering nor unflattering; they exist simply to be clothes and to cover him. To hide him from the searching eyes of the _others_ whose presence he can feel.

It takes a long time for him to be able to see them.

Bucky has spent so long forced to be aware of even the minutest of details that he couldn’t avoid feeling the eyes on him if he tried, but he has never been surveilled like this. There are flickers in the corners of his eyes when he turns, like catching sight of an inept agent on his trail, but they never stay long enough for him to identify. They are different colors, different sizes; once he thinks he catches sight of a long wave of hair, but the next time he turns it’s the smooth shine of a bald head. He has never been tailed by a crowd of people before.

Sometimes they feel so close behind him that he imagines their breath on his neck, but he knows, as he knows the wasteland, that they are not breathing.

Sometimes, he feels their hands reaching for him, pulling at his hair and tugging on his ankles to make him trip.

Bucky runs. He remembers the last time he was this afraid of something he could not see: it was the last time he slept. It was every time he slept. And now, in a dream of a wasteland, he has entered the domain of the things he can never fight, and he cannot wake to escape them. He is terrified, and he runs.

The people behind him do not run; he does not hear them moving, and there are no feet striking the dusty ground but his. But they do not drop behind by even a single pace.

Bucky stops running.

He knows who they are now; he knows he cannot escape them, because he carries them with him, just as he does his nightmares. They know that he knows, and when he turns this time, he can see them.

They are his dead.

 

*

 

Bucky tries, but he doesn’t know all of their names. He’s not sure why it’s such a sticking point for him, but it feels important.

There are men that Hydra considered threats, women they considered witnesses, and children they considered collateral damage. There are young people who needed to be stopped before they got too important, and old people who needed to be hastened along toward death. Bucky remembers every one of them, could describe in revolting detail how he shot them, stabbed them, strangled them, punched them with his metal hand and asked them questions while they slowly succumbed to internal injuries. He remembers all of his dead.

But they do not bear the injuries he gave them. They are standing there, half-substantial and whole, not as his victims, just as people. People whose lives he cut short. He knows it wasn’t his choice to kill them, but he also knows that he _did_ kill them, and that feels more important.

Bucky thinks it might be easier to look at them if he could see their wounds. Anything to distract from their accusing faces.

He still doesn’t know their names.

But he knows some of them. Standing near the front of the crowd, at the forefront of his mind, are Howard and Maria Stark. He never met Maria, but her eyes are cold, asking him _what have you done to my baby?_

A ghostly Iron Man appears beside her, and then a young man fighting back tears as he identifies her body, and then a little boy, clinging to her leg as he tries to hide behind her. He vanishes a second later; he is not among Bucky’s dead.

“I’m sorry I hurt him,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry I killed you.”

Maria doesn’t answer.

Another person steps out from among the crowd, and for a moment Bucky thinks it’s Steve, but then he looks closer. The man is wearing the spangled uniform and carrying the shield, but his face is spectral, as the imagined Tony Stark had been. This man isn’t Steve Rogers, he’s Captain America. Everything he was that Steve wasn’t, killed when the shield was brought to bear against a friend, when it was left behind in Siberia. Bucky looks at him, standing at attention, proud despite the flecks of his friend’s blood that spatter his shield, and he scowls.

“I’m not sorry you’re dead,” he says. “I’m sorry for how it happened, but I’m not sorry you’re dead. Steve never needed you. You were never real.”

Captain America fades back into the crowd of the dead.

Bucky watches him go, and wonders what they want from him. His regrets? His apologies? But he’d given both to Maria Stark, and she still stands there, watching him coolly. Do they want him to make amends? He opens his mouth to ask, but then he sees something in the distance that chills his blood.

He can see it through the flickering bodies of his dead and through the clouds it kicks up that might be rust or snow. It is amorphous, hard to differentiate and hard to track, but he knows what it is. He has had this nightmare before. As frightened as he was of his dead before he could see them, he knows what they are. He does not know their names, but he knows _who_ they are. They want him, they follow him, but they do not hurt him if he does not give in to them.

The monster on the horizon makes no such promise.

Bucky runs blindly. He sprints. He puts all of his enhancements to use to get away from the monster, not caring that he’s kicking up his own cloud, making himself easy to track. It doesn’t matter. The monster will find him anyway.

It always does.

 

*

 

Bucky’s flight is so panicked and thoughtless that he doesn’t even notice the other person in the wasteland until he trips over him, quite literally. He rolls back to his feet, panting, turns to wonder who could be substantial enough to _be_ tripped over, and stops dead.

It’s Tony Stark. And not a ghost this time; Bucky can see—Bucky _knows_ —that he is solid, and even if he couldn’t, well, he just tripped over him, hard enough to crash to the ground beside him. For several seconds, Bucky just stares at him in confusion, unsure of what’s going on.

“To—“ he begins, but then he stops himself. He doesn’t have that right. “Stark?”

Stark doesn’t answer. He’s curled on the ground, hands pressed to his face like he’s trying to hide it, like something’s hurting him, like he’s afraid something will get inside him if he doesn’t. He’s mostly still, but every few seconds he twitches, curling into a tighter ball. He makes a whimpering sound of fear.

“Stark?” Bucky asks again. He touches Stark’s shoulder, trying to wake him, until he realizes that Stark isn’t having a nightmare.

Stark is _in_ a nightmare.

It takes several seconds for Bucky to notice them, because they’re not his, but eventually he gets his eyes to focus on the crowd surrounding Tony, pulling at him and striking him where he lies on the ground. Tony’s dead no longer stare and accuse him silently; he has given in to them, and they are doing their best to take every part of him they can get. Bucky doesn’t know Stark very well—he’s sure Stark wouldn’t even _want_ to know him—but he can’t just leave him like this. He might wish the cold, grasping hands of the dead on the Red Skull, or Zola, or Pierce, but not for anything less than pure evil would he consign anyone to their awful embrace.

Bucky lifts Stark from the ground, holds him tightly, and carries him away from that place as quickly as he can.

 

*

 

Bucky’s left arm is visible, but he can’t feel the weight of it, isn’t aware of it when he isn’t actually looking at it. So much the better, he thinks; of all the tragedies that happened in Siberia, the one thing Bucky doesn’t regret is the loss of his metal arm. It was never his.

It was just another kind of control, back before he knew that he could be just as strong without his arm.

You have to come back, Soldier, or that arm will shut down. We’ll turn it off and make it dead weight. We’ve hidden a bomb inside it that will kill you. We’ve hidden a tracker inside it that will find you. We’ve hidden a release inside it that will make it fall off. Without that arm you’re weak, without it you’re useless. Without us, the arm is useless. No more running back to New York. You have to come back to us, or we’ll make you useless.

It had hurt, but Bucky wasn’t sad to see it go.

He worries, at first, that he won’t be able to lift Stark, to save him from his dead. An adult man is hard to lift and carry with just one arm. But he finds that when he needs it, the insubstantial left arm becomes solid enough to use, to get leverage under Stark’s shoulders and lift him from the ground. With the second hand, he can be sure of being gentle enough not to cause more pain.

Once he has Stark secure against his shoulder, held there tightly with just his right arm, Bucky looks down at the left and wills it to go away again. It fades and fades until eventually he can’t even see it anymore.

Bucky heaves a sigh of relief and keeps going.

 

*

 

They cannot outrun their dead, but they can hold them back. When Bucky takes hold of Stark, he is telling Stark’s dead that they are not free to have him, no matter whether Stark has fallen to them already or no. They heed him, for the time being, but their withdrawal is a reluctant one, and they linger only a pace behind, ready to seize Stark the moment Bucky rescinds his protection.

Bucky does not intend to give them that chance.

After a while, Stark relaxes in his hold, and his hands fall from his face. Bucky holds him until Stark stirs like he’s coming to, and then he lays Stark down gently on the soft ground. It is cold, but there’s nothing to be done about that.

Bucky sits beside him to wait.

The dead cease their advance, waiting like listless, hungry wolves in a circle around the two of them. They fade in their stillness, becoming once more the flickering shadows in the edges of Bucky’s vision. There is still the persistent feeling of being watched on the back of Bucky’s neck, but he has been surveilled, supervised, and monitored for as long as he can remember, and he knows how to ignore it.

Eventually, Stark opens his eyes.

Bucky freezes. This _isn’t_ Tony Stark.

The thing that looks like Stark—a projection of Bucky’s mind, maybe—pushes himself up on one elbow, turns to look around. His expression shutters when he sees the dead around them, and loosens when he sees how they keep their distance. Finally, he looks over at his rescuer.

“James?” he says, sounding shocked. Bucky winces. James has never been his name, not really.

“My name is Bucky,” he corrects.

“You look so real… How can you be here?” the projection asks. His tone is all wonder, as though he’s really pleased to see Bucky. It makes sense that someone in this wasteland would be glad to find anyone solid and real, but this is more than that; he seems glad that it’s _Bucky_ , specifically. As though he really had wanted to see him.

But that is impossible. The real Stark hates him, and with good reason.

“I would ask you the same question,” Bucky returns, recovering himself a little, “except I’m not sure that you _are_ here. You’re solid enough, but so are the things that chase me. You look like Tony Stark, but you can’t be him.”

“And why not?” says the projection, sounding rather offended.

“Because your eyes are blue,” Bucky says simply.

The projection squints, looks Bucky full in the face with an expression of confusion.

“Your eyes are blue too,” the projection objects, “or blue-grey, anyway, and the J—Bucky I know definitely has brown eyes. When he lets you see them anyway; he’s terribly fond of that domino mask.”

“I’ve never—“

“I’m sure you haven’t,” the projection reassures. He runs a tired hand over his face and pushes himself up to sitting. “I’m guessing this is your first experience with the multiverse.”

 

*

 

 

*

 

It takes a while, but the projection—no, it really is Tony Stark—establishes that both of them are real, and both of them are present in this strange dream wasteland. They are not, however, from the same world.

In halting words, Stark describes an Earth full of superheroes, with teams set up to take on any threat the world can throw at them. There’s a lot Stark isn’t telling him, he’s sure, but it sounds sort of wonderful, to Bucky. Like what the Avengers could have been for Steve, if they had been allowed to grow close and form family ties the way Steve and Bucky had so long ago. Bucky has been alone so long that the idea of having people to count on, people who count on _him_ , is both terrifying and dizzying with longing.

He can only imagine that Steve felt the same, before he made his new friends.

In turn, Bucky describes what he knows of his own world. The chaos and accusations of the conflict between Avengers, yes, but the triumphs, too. Steve had been tearful, in the Wakandan jet they left Siberia in, when he described the first time the Avengers worked together, how they put aside their differences and did something great.

Bucky tells him about Howard and Maria Stark, because he already saw how well keeping that a secret goes. When he does, Stark shakes with anger and grief and curls himself into a tight ball for several minutes, breathing deeply.

When he uncurls, he is quieter, but he does not attack.

Bucky relaxes, knowing he did something right.

He watches Stark carefully as they unfold their worlds to each other. There is something unsettling in Stark’s eyes besides the hard blue of tempered steel, something dark and haunted. Bucky knows how to read pain, and the meaning of this deep, dull agony is clear to him; there is someone among Stark’s dead who should not be there, though none of them should. Someone he loved, someone he would have done anything to protect—someone he had to watch die instead.

Bucky, thank God, does not know that particular pain himself.

He tries, as best he can, to save Stark from it. They talk aimlessly for a while, steering away from the most painful of subjects. Bucky knows that he doesn’t have the knack for conversation that he once did, but he does his best.

This may not be his Stark, but he can still do something good for him, to make up for his crime.

 

* * *

 

Tony closes his eyes and looks at what he has left. His name. An endless catalog of mistakes he doesn’t remember making. A detailed registry of names that he doesn’t understand. The images of two men in similar red, white, and blue uniforms, both loved and both failed. One of them is bloody. It’s not much, but the little memory he has left is bouncing around in his empty mind and it _hurts_ , it hurts so badly that he barely notices the pain in his body.

He opens his eyes and looks at the man in armor standing over him, taunting him, beating him.

He just wants it to end.

He closes his eyes.

Blood-red darkness swallows him.

 

*

 

Tony’s body is broken, a shell clinging to the life support machines as they struggle to hold back death. His mind is disconnected from his empty brain, but it is not gone. Aimless, it takes a meandering path away from the shell, past the friends who sit beside it, past the edges of everything he’s ever understood.

In the darkness, it meets another, and they recognize each other.

In the space between worlds, Tony dreams.

 

*

 

He wakes to the feeling of hands on his body, grasping and clawing as though they want to pull him apart. It passes when he sits up like no more than a pins-and-needles sensation being shaken out. He takes careful stock of himself, then, and he has a panic attack when he realizes that he can remember _everything_ , and that’s wrong, it should be gone, deleted along with the database—

Then he opens his eyes and sees the wasteland, and he knows that he succeeded.

Tony cries with relief.

For a minute, he lets his analytical mind wonder how he’s accessing memories that ought to be deleted—he figures that he’s detached from his physical body altogether, and what he is here is just some manifestation of his soul, or at least, whatever nonphysical part of a person it is that the Soul Gem manipulates—but then he shuts that down, because it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s left his own world, probably for good. All that’s left is to understand the place he’s in now.

He trails his fingers through the soft dust of this dreamworld and wonders what it’s made of. It’s fine, powdery, and cold. The whole place is cold. The dust might be a fine, dry snow, except that sometimes when he looks at it he’s sure that it’s rust-red, staining his fingers like the invisible blood that’s always there.

But then, he’s not really _seeing_ it, after all. He’s just knowing it, imagining it, because this is a dream.

He still isn’t sure whether it’s white or red.

He is sure that he’s cold.

Tony gets to his feet, hoping that moving will help him to warm up.

It’s then that he notices that he’s not alone. He can feel eyes on him; well, there are always eyes on him. There have been eyes on him since the moment he was born, and cameras since he was four. Admiring eyes, accusing eyes—they’re always watching him. His imagination connects the invisible eyes watching him to the invisible hands that were clutching him, and he wonders if the connection is intuition or just apophenia. Or maybe all of this is a hallucination.

But it is not the eyes or the hands that make him think that he is not alone.

No, it is the sound, a mechanical whirring and clunking that makes him think of steampunk, the audible tension of levers and gears as something huge and heavy stands motionless as a coiled snake is motionless; it is tensing itself to strike.

Slowly, Tony turns to see it.

It is huge and it is mechanical, so Tony was right on two counts, but he was very wrong on another. The demon that stands behind Tony looks as though its very existence is disdainful of the faux-age of clockwork and steam; it is beyond space age, sleek and heavyset and, frankly, ugly as sin. Something about it is familiar, but Tony can’t quite place it.

But he doesn’t have time to wonder, because that’s when the thing surges forward to attack. Tony springs backwards and takes stock again by instinct, trying to figure out how to defeat it. He has nothing, but he’s still trying anyway.

He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t know how _not_ to try.

Tony runs around the demon's feet, scrambling to keep ahead of waving arms and swinging cables, all of which are doing their best to knock him to the ground. The mechanical demon is slow, and that’s something,

Something about the shape of the thing, about the design, itches at the back of Tony’s mind.

And then the demon fires a repulsor ray straight at him and he has to dive to the side to get out of the way, and he knows what the familiarity is. This demon is not just made of technology, it’s made of _his_ technology. He recognizes the way the joints flow together, the way the motors hum smoothly until they catch and lock. He definitely recognizes the repulsor technology that he has never shared with anyone.

This demon is _his_ , made from the most dangerous parts of himself, and set against him.

God knows Tony has never been able to defeat _himself_.

And so he runs.

 

*

 

It doesn’t take long to put distance between himself and the slow, lumbering demon, and the heat that running brings to his muscles is welcome, but another itch is growing in his mind. The further he runs, the stronger the sensation of being _not alone_ becomes, and this time, he thinks it really does come from the feeling of eyes, from the reach of hands that try to pull him back.

There is something here that he cannot see. He didn’t just imagine it.

Tony wants to turn back and look, to investigate, but it isn’t safe yet. He keeps running until he can’t see the demon behind him, and then he changes direction and keeps running for a long while. At last, he thinks he’s gone far enough that the demon will take some time to find him, though he wishes he had armor to keep him safe.

He ceases running, scuffs his toe in the dust that might be white or red, and turns to look at the shimmering, not-quite-there shapes behind him.

They are people; that much is obvious. They are too insubstantial to identify at first, but as Tony watches, they gradually fade into view like a developing polaroid.

After a minute, it’s easy to see who they are.

Standing at the front of the group of people is Steve Rogers.

There are others behind him, many others—Sal and Happy and Rumiko _oh God oh Ru I’m so sorry_ —but it’s Steve who leads the group, Steve whose hard, intense expression accuses Tony in every line. _Why did you do this to me?_ he asks without speaking, and Tony—

Tony doesn’t have an answer for him. Not one that makes things right. He sold his soul to keep his friends safe, to keep _Steve_ safe, and he got _nothing_.

He reaches a hand out helplessly, because it’s been hard, so hard, to go on living knowing that his best friend was dead because of him, and even with James to hold onto him Tony has felt every day like he’s sliding off a cliff in slow motion. To see Steve again, right there in front of him, is…

It’s…

Tony doesn’t have the words for it.

His hand passes through Steve’s chest when it reaches him, and Tony finds himself fighting back tears. Of course this Steve isn’t real, he’s just a projection of Tony’s unconscious mind, but it hurts all the same.

“You were right, it wasn’t worth it,” he murmurs, but Steve’s scowl only deepens. _Too little, too late_ , his face says, and Tony can only agree. He can’t fight Steve; he doesn’t know why he ever thought he could.

He said at the time that it killed him to do it, and oh the irony—

“Anything you want,” Tony says.

He spares a thought to think of James, James who held him through these darkest of nights, but in the end, it was only Tony who needed James. James never needed him in return, because he has Natasha and Sam and Sharon who care about him. James won’t want to bring Tony back from this dream, and so there’s no reason to deny anything to this Steve. He’s as good as dead already.

Tony doesn’t _want_ to deny anything to Steve.

He surrenders himself to his dead.

 

*

 

It hurts, but he doesn’t fight it. Doesn’t struggle.

He doesn’t deserve to escape these people. He’s responsible for them, for all of them. The small fingers of the Stamford children dig into his flesh like little knives, and he covers his face so that he won’t have to see them. He doesn’t think he could take it if he did.

Eventually, they will have taken enough from him, and they will leave him be.

Or at least they will let him finish dying.

 

*

 

All at once, the dead draw back. Their hands release him and he heaves gasping breaths of relief.

He feels half-conscious. He imagines hands, solid, warm hands, lifting him from the ground. He imagines that the one under his knees is firm with muscle, and the one under his shoulders is hard with metal.

He imagines that James has come to save him, but he knows it cannot be true.

Nonetheless, he sinks into that imaginary embrace and lets it lull the tension and pain from his body, until he is limp as a child. He lets himself be calmed by the illusion of his—he doesn’t know what to call him—lover? Is that going too far, for what they were?

He doesn’t know, but he lets it happen, all the same.

 

*

 

After a while, Tony feels like he’s at least approaching the neighborhood of _okay_ again. He opens his eyes and sees the dead—still all around him, still wanting to take him, claim him, punish him for their deaths. But they aren’t touching him anymore; they’re giving him a berth of a few feet. Not leaving, but leaving him alone, at least for the time being.

There’s another presence there, though. One of them who is much closer than the others. One who is—breathing?

Tony turns to look, wondering if he hadn’t imagined being carried to safety after all.

“James?” he exclaims. Had he been wrong about James? Had James found a way to come into this dream wasteland and bring him back? It seems wildly improbable—it’s more likely that Tony made a projection of James out of hope and stupid longing—but Tony can’t help but want it all the same. He hangs onto the idea for a few seconds longer, until—

“My name is Bucky,” the projection corrects. Well, that’s never happened before. Tony’s pretty sure that the only person James lets— _had_ let—call him Bucky was Steve; he’s James to everyone else, except maybe Natasha, who’s partial to Russian nicknames. But the projected James—if that’s what he is—doesn’t seem like the other things made by Tony’s mind. His dead are insubstantial, the demon was a construct of his own designs, but James looks _real_. He has the imperfections, the scars, the dented and flickering metal arm, that mark him as something Tony _couldn’t_ have imagined.

It’s so good to see him that Tony can hardly stand it.

“You look so real…” he murmurs, almost to himself. “How can you be here?”

“I would ask you the same question,” James— _Bucky_ —returns suspiciously, “except I’m not sure that you _are_ here. You’re solid enough, but so are the things that chase me. You look like Tony Stark, but you can’t be him.”

Well, that’s kind of rich coming from a James who insists that Tony call him Bucky.

“And why not?” he demands.

“Because your eyes are blue,” Bucky says.

“Your eyes are blue too, or blue-grey, anyway,” Tony protests, “and the J—Bucky I know definitely has brown eyes. When he lets you see them anyway; he’s terribly fond of that domino mask.” And he is—sometimes he forgets to take it off until a couple rounds in bed have passed, and he refuses to look embarrassed when Tony teases him about it.

But there’s a thought there, a possibility; he suggested it himself. It only took him a minute to realize what he had thought. _A_ James. There are, of course, multiple versions of James across the multiverse—is that what this is? A version of James from another world who has blue eyes and just so happens to prefer being called Bucky?

Tony wonders if _his_ Steve is alive, where he comes from.

“I’ve never—“ says Bucky, and Tony assumes _worn a domino mask_ is the rest of that sentence; he, personally, has never seen much point in concealing your identity when your sidekick name is exactly the same as your regular name.

“I’m sure you haven’t,” Tony says, placating him. He sits up and braces himself for a long explanation. “I’m guessing this is your first experience with the multiverse.”

 

*

 

They talk, sketching out their worlds. Tony hates to lay out his own, to put the failures of Earth-616 on display, but it is necessary, to give Bucky an idea of where Tony comes from. It’s much better to hear Bucky describe his own world.

It’s clear that Bucky doesn’t know very much about the current state of his world, that most of his information is intel from handlers who only need him to have a good enough idea of the state of political affairs to get his job done. This makes his grasp of politics and power structures pretty solid, but his understanding of individuals and cultures incredibly shaky. He was probably recovered very recently, Tony thinks, and probably didn’t have the advantage of perfect memory restoration like James did. Well, Cosmic Cubes don’t exactly grow on trees, it isn’t that surprising.

But at the same time, Tony is _amazed_ to hear about Bucky’s world. Sure, it doesn’t have the infrastructure that Tony’s does—it doesn’t have the sheer number of heroes—but that just makes it feel _new_ , young, like something about it is only just beginning. Tony is enchanted by it the way he is enchanted by children, not because they are weak or impressionable, but because they have such infinite potential.

The world Bucky describes is so young that it has not even learned its name yet, it does not know it is one among many, and yet the more Tony listens the more he can hear the ways that world can grow.

To a futurist, that potential is, as it always has been, breathtakingly lovely.

 

*

 

Bucky confesses, in a halting, wet voice, that it was him who caused the Starks’ car crash. Tony looks up and sees his parents, a little older maybe, but his parents still, standing among Bucky’s dead, and he knows that Bucky is telling the truth.

And it shakes Tony to the core.

It takes him minutes of shuddering with his knees pulled tight to his chest to remember that it’s not true, not in his world. He remembers hours sitting with James, a telepath beside them scouring James' brain to make sure that there were no latent triggers lurking in his mind. James has perfect recall of all his kills, and Tony trusts that he would have said something if Howard and Maria Stark were among them.

It’s minutes after that that Tony can force himself to remember another crucial fact: even in Bucky’s world, he can’t be blamed for the Starks’ deaths. He was controlled—whether by the Soviets or by Hydra, it doesn’t really matter. The Winter Soldier’s handlers are the ones to blame for his kills.

It still hurts to think about, though.

But Tony, at least, has known that his parents’ car crash was fishy for years now, long enough for it to sink in that _someone_ had wanted them dead, and had the pull to make it happen. The way Bucky tells it, _his_ Tony had had no idea.

Tony can’t even imagine what it would be like to find out that they were murdered while standing beside the killer.

He’s unspeakably relieved that he doesn’t have to.

 

*

 

On the heels of that revelation, Tony feels compelled to share his own terrible secret. He feels that it would be only fair, to trade _I killed your best friend_ for _you killed my parents_ , to make sure that Bucky knows what he’s getting into, throwing his lot in with Tony here in their shared dream wasteland. The guilt and compulsion well up over a few minutes of what approximates small talk, until eventually he gives in to it. Tony opens his mouth, not sure how to explain that he’d killed Steve in a way that won’t get _him_ killed, and knowing that he’d deserve it if it did.

But before he can speak, he catches the expression on Bucky’s face, looking over Tony’s shoulder and into the crowd of the dead that still surrounds them.

Bucky has seen Steve, standing among Tony’s dead, and he knows what it means.

Tony chokes on the half-formed words in his throat.

“Stark—“ Bucky gasps, sounding like there’s no air in his lungs. The name stings more than it should, a deliberate marker of distance that hasn’t been there between him and James in months. But Tony doesn’t get to be hurt by it; it’s his own fault. He deserves it.

“There… there was a war,” Tony manages. Bucky’s eyes look so lost, and his face is stone except for his mouth, which is still open in shock. “It was the worst thing to happen on my Earth. To my fam—to us. The superheroes. All of us took sides. And I—Steve was my best friend, and I—we ended up on opposite sides.” His voice breaks and he blinks back tears, but he has to finish this. He laughs bitterly, hollowly. “I won. I won, or that’s what they tell me. I’m supposed to put the world back together without my best friend in it.”

“That doesn’t sound very much like winning,” Bucky says, finally tearing his eyes away from the ghostly, accusing Steve.

“Pyrrhus of Epirus,” Tony murmurs with a wan smile.

“What?” says Bucky. Tony just shakes his head. It doesn’t matter.

 

*

 

They sit in silence for a long while. It’s Bucky who finally breaks it, and by the expression on his face, it seems like it’s a surprise to both of them.

“Steve said something similar, when we all got to Wakanda,” he says quietly. Tony looks up, forces himself to meet Bucky’s eyes. “He said he didn’t know whether he’d won or lost, because he couldn’t go back to America and he’d given up the shield, but most of his new friends, his Avengers, were there with him, and they believed in him, and… and God help him but he had me with him too.”

A hint of a smile nudges at the corner of Bucky’s lips, and Tony’s heart catches, just a little, in spite of everything.

“Steve’s never needed that shield to do great things,” Tony says, because it will make Bucky happy, but also because it’s just _true_ , as true as anything has ever been. He thinks of the Nomad costume and smiles a little, helplessly. He can feel the dead Steve’s glaring eyes on his back, but this isn’t about Steve anymore; this is about Bucky, who is here and real and _alive_. So Tony keeps going. “He always found a way to be helping somebody, whether he was dressed like a flag or like a stripper.”

“A _what_ now?” Bucky’s eyes are very wide, and his smile is broad and incredulous now; Tony can see the curl of his lip, the flash of his teeth.

“The one time we let him sew his own costume, he was going off to do some independent, America-free heroing,” he explains. “He went all black, with yellow boots and gloves, and oh my God, he gave himself a _cape,”_ Tony remembers. All at once he’s smiling wide like he can’t help it. Steve tripped over that cape, he remembers.

“I’m not exactly getting ‘stripper’ from that, Stark,” Bucky says, but he’s smiling, too.

“ _Tony_ ,” he corrects, and then he delivers the best part of the Nomad story. “And that’s because I haven’t told you yet about the painted-on pants or the plunging neckline.”

“Plunging. Steve?” Bucky asks, like he’s waiting for Tony to say _psych!_

“Plunging,” Tony affirms. He traces the V shape down his own chest with two index fingers. “All the way to the waist. It was _glorious_.”

“You’re not kidding,” says Bucky faintly.

“Not even a little,” says Tony.

And then they’re laughing softly—and Bucky’s laugh is _so good_ , he’d almost forgotten—and just for a minute it feels like it’s okay to laugh, okay to relax and be happy, just a little bit, to remember Steve without being devastated.

Tony can’t remember the last time he felt this way, but he suspects it was with James.

 

*

 

After a while, Tony notices that the metal arm is gone. He’s not sure when it disappeared.

It had always looked insubstantial, spectral in the same way that the dead seemed to hover on the edge of visibility, though Tony remembers the hard strength of that arm as it lifted him to safety. Now, it has passed away entirely, leaving not even an intangible shadow at Bucky’s left shoulder.

Tony notices because of the change in Bucky’s posture. He looks… relaxed, almost pleased, now that the mechanical limb is gone.

Most people would look lopsided, finding themselves suddenly down an arm, but Bucky is undiminished. If anything, he looks stronger without his enemy’s tool anchored into his body than he did with it. Maybe it’s the confidence.

Tony tries to keep his admiration to a minimum, because this isn’t James, but he doesn’t think it works very well.

 

*

 

At some point, Bucky touches Tony.

It’s an innocuous touch, the barest brush of fingers against Tony’s arm, but Tony notices it for two reasons.

Firstly, because he knows how careful James is with physical contact, how aware he is of his own presence and how deliberate he is every time he lays hands on another person, however small the gesture seems. It’s easy to believe that Bucky would be the same way. So, he must’ve touched Tony on purpose; and whatever other reasons he may have had, the touch is at least a gesture of trust.

That alone would floor Tony, under the circumstances. He can’t remember the last time someone trusted him.

Secondly, the moment their skin makes contact, the half-visible dead flicker out of view for a second longer than usual, and when they return, they seem just a little further away.

“Bucky,” Tony says, and Bucky’s mouth snaps shut, his attention instantly caught. “Look.”

Carefully, telegraphing so as not to surprise Bucky, Tony reaches out and rests his hand on Bucky’s arm. The warmth of the contact is a startling contrast to the ever-present cold of the wasteland, but Tony makes himself focus on the dead. As they touch, the dead grow fainter and further still, like for some reason they can’t bear to be near the contact.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Bucky says, in a tone that says he knows it’s a gross understatement. “I’ve never been able to get them to back away before.”

“Before?” Tony asks.

“They’re always waiting, when I dream. I can never run far enough to get them to leave me alone.”

Tony trades him a truth for a truth again; he’s trying to be fair to one person, at least, even though openness is difficult for him. He’s working on it.

“I have an enhancile called Extremis that lets me talk to computers, more or less. It takes in more data than I can process, and when I miss things, well…” Tony indicates the dead with an expansive gesture. “It sends _them_ to me, to make sure I figure it out. They’re… not gentle.” A hand comes up to his throat automatically, remembering the hallucination of Steve’s tight grip, cutting off his air.

“But they don’t like it when we touch?” asks Bucky, looking down at the place where Tony’s hand still rests on his arm. “What if we…?”

Instead of explaining, Bucky just shifts so that he’s sitting right next to Tony on his left side, their legs parallel lines in the dust. Carefully, deliberately, Bucky leans into Tony and stretches his arm around him, so that they’re in contact from shoulders to ankles. It’s so warm that Tony gasps, and he can hear the suppressed intake of air in Bucky’s lungs, as well. He doesn’t want to hope too much and be disappointed, so he keeps his eyes closed for a few more seconds.

He isn’t sure when he closed them.

“Tony,” Bucky says softly, reverently. “Look.”

Tony opens his eyes, and the dead have faded away, finally, finally gone. He slumps into Bucky’s side and almost cries with relief, sighing as Bucky easily takes his weight and leans back, each of them supporting the other. Cautiously, he puts his own arms around Bucky’s waist, a touch that is familiar but not quite the same as it was with James. It’s still so good, though, the moment when it really hits Tony that Bucky is _letting_ Tony touch him, when he knows that Bucky is accepting the part of Tony that wants nothing more than to give everything he can for the people he cares about. The tiredness and the urge to let himself rest in that strong hold is the same, though, and the exhaustion of all his running finally catches up with him.

“I’m just gonna…” he murmurs, but that’s as far as he gets before he hazes out into something like sleep, head resting on Bucky’s shoulder.

His last thought is that he doesn’t need Bucky to be James, because this is perfect, too.

 

* * *

 

Bucky knows that he was the one who initiated the contact, but he’s absolutely not prepared for the sensation of Tony’s body against his. He’s lithe and strong, and even though they’re almost of a height, Tony fits himself perfectly under Bucky’s arm. And then Tony’s arms wrap around Bucky in return, and it’s _so warm_ that Bucky can’t even move for long moments, just drinking in the heat of him and hoping it will go on forever.

He’s not foolish enough to believe that everything is okay between them—he saw Tony’s face when Bucky told him about his parents, and he himself wants a few more answers about whatever happened to Steve in Tony’s world—but right now, freed from his dead, at least for the moment, he doesn’t feel like he can worry very much about that.

Not while Tony is warming him to the core.

“I’m just gonna…” Tony says, slurring a little and trailing off as his head drops onto Bucky’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem asleep, not exactly—this place is a dream, after all—but he’s definitely not conscious, not as Bucky would ordinarily define it. Maybe, Bucky thinks hopefully, this kind of sleep is different enough from the ordinary kind that he won’t wake up screaming and fighting and end up hurting Tony by mistake.

Tony’s trusting Bucky so much, and letting Bucky take care of him at the same time. The dead still haven’t returned.

Maybe he’s more okay with Bucky than Bucky thought he was.

Something catches in Bucky’s throat, and he has to swallow hard. He pulls Tony a little closer and lets his own head rest on top of Tony’s. It feels so good, to touch another person again with gentleness instead of violence. And Tony… Tony is being so gentle, too, so good to him that something is stirring deep in Bucky, something he had thought long extinct. There’s a shuddering in his chest like his heart has started to beat again, bringing him back to life after long decades of being dead in all but name.

And after all that, Bucky thinks, it’s not too much to trust Tony in return.

He noses into Tony’s hair and lets himself drift.

 

*

 

At first, Bucky isn’t sure what brings him back to consciousness. If this were the real world, he might think it was the light, but while the wasteland is bright enough to see easily, it isn’t a _real_ light, and it doesn’t interfere with sleep in the way Bucky might’ve expected it to.

Then, he sees the familiar, horrible shape drawing closer, and his heart starts to beat wildly in his chest. His nightmare is catching up with him, and this time it’s going to get Tony, too. He is suddenly viscerally certain that he cannot allow that to happen. They have to go, they have to run and run and never look back.

Under his arm, Tony begins to stir, blue eyes sliding open and startling Bucky again with their unexpected, vivid color.

“James?” he murmurs sleepily.

“We’re in danger,” Bucky says, too urgent to correct Tony on his name again. He’s beginning to think that Tony knew the _other_ Bucky pretty well, though. Tony startles to alertness and pulls out of Bucky’s grip.

Bucky misses the contact instantly.

“What? What’s wrong, Bucky?” Tony asks him, talking very quickly.

“That is,” Bucky says, pointing. Tony looks at it and his brow furrows with confusion.

“That’s not the thing that was hunting me,” he says.

“That’s because it’s the thing that was hunting _me_ ,” Bucky replies. With every second, the amorphous monster is coming closer, and the curling, organic shapes that surround it are growing more distinct with every passing moment.

“Is that—“ Tony says, but seems unable to finish.

“Hydra,” says Bucky. “If it catches me, it’ll take me again, and it’ll make me—it’ll make me—I don’t do those things anymore. I don’t. I can’t.”

“Alright,” says Tony. “Alright, it’s okay. We’ll run.”

They run.

 

*

 

When they stop running, Tony wants to experiment.

“This is a dream, right?” he says. “So let’s see what we can dream up.”

It’s fascinating to watch Tony playing around with the dream-mechanics of this world, calling up blueprints and schematics that he’s memorized and drawing their lines in the air like holograms. Making the blueprint-images solid seems to be taxing, so Tony only does little things at a time: one repulsor gauntlet, or one golden helmet, or, once, a simple clamshell phone to test whether he could make working digital technology.

It sends a pang through Bucky, thinking of the Tony Stark of his own world, the one he hurt so badly. He won’t ever get the chance to apologize now, but he hopes that Tony and Steve will be able to make up, now that Bucky is out of the way.

To distract himself, Bucky tries to dream things up, too. He’s no idiot, but it’s clear that Tony’s genius is a distinct advantage here; Bucky can manage a dozen kinds of knives easily, and he can fill out the shape and weight of a gun, but it disintegrates when he tries to fire it. He considers trying to make himself an arm, but even though he’s getting used to a new balance, he doesn’t want _that_ weapon back. So he sticks to guns and knives, because they’re trustworthy. A headache starts up when he keeps at it for too long, and he glances over at Tony, wondering. Is Tony really _that_ much smarter, that he can make and build things with impunity while Bucky’s head pounds?

But there is the pinched look on Tony’s face of a man struggling not to react to something that hurts him, so he must be suffering, too.

That realization comes with an odd feeling of relief; Tony is magnificent, no doubt about that, but at least he’s still… _in my league_ is the thought that drifts across Bucky’s mind, but that’s ridiculous so he shakes it away.

Instead he distracts them both with his own very old memories. Not stories this time, but songs; between the Howling Commandos and the 107th, Bucky has stored up dozens if not hundreds of soldiers’ songs. Some are silly and most are dirty, but they were all written for the same purpose. They take the men’s minds off of what’s in front of them, and give them something to laugh about, give them a little light to look at instead.

Tony Stark may not be a soldier, but Bucky feels a kinship with him all the same. They are both men who kept fighting long after they expected to go home or just die, who want to go home but aren’t sure it still exists.

The wasteland feels like a stepping-off point, but into what, Bucky doesn’t think either of them knows.

As Bucky sings, Tony starts off looking confused, and then there’s a faint smile on his face that widens as the songs go on, and before long he’s outright laughing at the sheer nerve and absurdity he’s hearing. Bucky smiles too, awkward like he doesn’t quite remember how, and he can hear the smile in his own singing voice.

For a while, the two of them share that little light.

 

*

 

Time is hard to keep track of in the wasteland, but Bucky guesses that the cycle continues for a few days before Tony changes everything.

They run from the approach of the Hydra, or sometimes from a mechanical beast that seems to be Tony’s personal tormentor, until they can’t see it anymore, and when they finally feel like they’ve gotten away, they sit down and rest. Neither of them feels quite safe enough to sleep lying down, but if they lean over, propped up on each other’s shoulders, it’s more than comfortable enough for them to let their minds drift. It isn’t quite like ordinary sleep, but it seems to serve the same purpose.

The dead still try to torment them with their accusing eyes, but they remain stymied by the warmth of human contact, so Bucky and Tony touch as much as possible. They can’t do it while they run—hand-holding while running might just be Hollywood’s most impractical cliché yet—but when they stop, there are linked arms, laced fingers, heads on shoulders, or simply leaning into each other when they want to keep their hands free.

While they rest, they talk. Some of it is sharing information, fleshing out the rough sketches they had drawn of their universes. Mostly, they talk because it keeps them sane.

They keep each other safe.

Bucky tries to ignore the twist of warmth in his chest that rises when Tony holds him, when Tony leans on his shoulder and tells him some impossible story about a land of dinosaurs or a supervillain with a flying horse or a talking space raccoon. Bucky isn’t foolish enough to believe that it’s purely selfless; Tony must be cold here too, and it’s not like Bucky hasn’t seen the dead Steve’s furious, judging eyes. He tries to tell himself that Tony is doing it because it eases his own mind, and not because he wants to do it for Bucky.

The problem is that the longer it goes on, the less Bucky listens to himself.

No one has ever taken care of him like this, with gentle, dexterous hands and a wry smile and a look in his eye like he knows _exactly_ the kind of anguish Bucky’s soul has been through. Tony knows pain intimately, and he gets so focused that Bucky feels sometimes like he’s the only thing in Tony’s world, the only thing that matters to him. It’s a rush, being the center of Tony’s attention, and it only feeds that little voice telling him that Tony is being generous because he cares about Bucky. Bucky in particular. Bucky over all the other problems.

Feeling like Tony cares about him is not unlike knowing that Steve would fight the whole UN for him. It’s a little less terrifying, though.

And so they keep running, and Bucky keeps a sharp eye out behind them despite the cold eyes of Maria Stark that watch back, and he does his best to take care of Tony in return. He thinks they might’ve kept going like that forever, except that one day—if it is a day—when they see the Hydra coming, they don’t run. Not this time.

Bucky is already pulling Tony to standing, poised on the balls of his feet, ready to run for his life, when Tony changes the game. Tony doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it, but he looks at Bucky, looks at the Hydra in its nebulous, many-necked shape, and then he asks a question.

“Is there anything I can do?”

And Bucky doesn’t know why, but that question lodges in his brain. Tony is offering to _help_ , without really knowing what he’s up against like Bucky does, and he’s offering to stay even when it isn’t his monster to fight, when it won’t take him the way it always tries to take Bucky—it matters so much more than Bucky can explain. It makes him feel more human than he has in a long time.

All at once, Bucky knows he can’t run from this, not this time.

“ _Is_ there anything?” he says. “Can we fight it?”

He’s never been strong enough before, not on his own, but he’s not on his own anymore.

“This is a dream,” Tony answers with a slow smile. “I’m sure I can think of something.”

With joined hands, they turn to face the oncoming beast.

 

*

 

The waiting takes longer than Bucky expects it to. While they were running, they had been counting on the slowness of the creatures pursuing them, but now that they’re waiting for it to catch up to them, it seems like an awful, drawn-out torture rather than an advantage.

Bucky feels tenser with every passing moment, but Tony at his side seems oddly relaxed. His hand is still gripping Bucky’s firmly, but his posture is loose when Bucky darts a look at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says, catching the expression.

“Don’t worry about it?” Bucky asks incredulously. Tony sighs and turns toward him more fully.

“Look, if I know you, you’re more worried about what you’ll do to other people than what that thing can do to you,” he says. “But if you’re here, well… we’re both dead, aren’t we?”

“Close enough,” Bucky answers darkly. He had known going into cryo that it was unlikely he’d ever come back up again. Whether they put a bullet between his eyes to match the other Winter Soldiers or whether they just left him there forever—he couldn’t imagine anyone saying _hey, you know what we really need right now is a crazy murderer who’ll flip on us after ten words in Russian_ —he had chosen cryo knowing that it was probably a permanent option.

“You don’t have to face this thing if you don’t want to. I just want you to know that other people won’t get hurt if we don’t win. And you… well, you said it yourself. You’re already dead. There’s nothing to lose.”

 _There’s you_ , Bucky wants to say, but it feels like too much, too soon. Fear opens up before him like an abyss, and he has a vivid image of himself falling off that precipice into a world where he’s trapped with the Hydra and his dead and drowning in desperate loneliness. He can’t bear to think about himself without Tony, and it frightens him how quickly Tony has become so vital to him. At the same time, though, Tony’s words _are_ reassuring. There’s nothing he can do about the people he already killed, but he knows he can’t hurt any more.

The Hydra is coming closer and closer, near enough now that they can hear its heavy steps on the dusty ground.

“Ready?” Bucky asks. He releases Tony’s hand and shudders as he feels the eyes of the dead on him again, but it’s necessary. With his hand out it front of him, he focuses, and a line appears above his palm. Slowly, other lines join it, connecting and winding together until he’s holding a pointed shape, like half-finished line art. He concentrates a little more, and the lines become clean and sharp and the shape fills in with color and weight. A long knife, solid and almost real, drops into his hand, and he exhales sharply.

At his side, Tony is doing the same. A gauntlet has formed up around his hand, and an intricate circular blueprint is unfolding itself in the center of the palm. After a moment, the circle fills in with wires and glass and metal casing.

It’s amazing, to think that Tony can hold all of that in his mind at once, and focus enough to make it solid.

The repulsor in the gauntlet begins to glow just as the Hydra reaches them, roaring as one of its heads makes eye contact with Bucky. It knows him, and it wants him. He’s sure he looks fey, but he doesn’t care. He’s ready. It’s time.

 

*

 

 

*

 

The fight is fast and chaotic.

For a few seconds, Bucky and the Hydra stare each other down, each waiting for the other to show a weakness. Under the intense scrutiny, some buried instinct screams at Bucky to turn his body, to hide the left side that no longer has a weapon, and he fights it down, keeps his shoulders square to the monster even as he raises his knife.

It looks so small, compared to the huge body and many writhing heads of the Hydra.

“So, before we get started,” Tony says beside him, aiming his palm at the monster, “I want to congratulate you on your depiction of the Hydra as a many- _headed_ creature instead of a many- _legged_ creature, unlike His Skullishness; that was just embarrassing. However, I think it should be noted that the addition of more heads leads to a serious increase in the number of teeth involved.”

A helpless smirk tugs at the corner of Bucky’s mouth, and his eyes flick amusedly over to Tony.

The Hydra, on the other hand, doesn’t find the joke quite so funny. It takes advantage of the momentary lapse in Bucky’s laser focus, and one of its dragonish heads surges forwards, snapping its teeth and glaring.

Bucky leaps over the teeth and springs off of the Hydra’s snout, twisting to land on his feet behind the horned head, and he brings his knife down as fast and hard as he can. The head lands in the dust with a thump. The victory is short-lived, however; three more heads snap their jaws viciously and Bucky barely gets out of the way, slashing at them as he rolls. It’s too late, though—that first headless neck is drawn back into the writhing mass and Bucky can only watch it sprouting two more equally ugly heads while he dodges the furious snouts still dogging him.

He stabs one and then another, but the wounds are ineffectual against a creature so large. One head loses an eye to his blade but still comes so close to taking Bucky’s head off that Bucky can _taste_ the discharge of repulsor fire when Tony saves him. There’s a sickening sizzle as the heat cauterizes the neck into a charred stump.

“Score two for mythological accuracy,” Tony quips.

Bucky barely has time to feel relief, because another head is just behind the first and Bucky has no choice but to roll under it, getting out of the way of the teeth but losing most of his maneuverability until he can get back to his feet. Desperately, he hacks at the neck above him until the head drops aside.

Bucky quickly stabs his knife into the neck and uses it as a handhold to keep the neck in place. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he won’t get eaten before the remainder can be neutralized.

“Tony!” he calls, and Tony responds instantly, blasting the stump with his repulsor. The Hydra screams from a dozen heads.

“Two down, about a hundred to go,” Tony says, retreating quickly from the monster, which is thrashing and rolling its eyes with new fury.

“Let’s get to work,” says Bucky. He springs aside as the Hydra lunges forward, separating them.

The rest of the heads are almost as difficult to deal with as that first mistake. One he gets into his rhythm, Bucky can slice through them almost as fast as they can come at him, but there are so many that he can’t track them all at once. If he holds them in place too long, the others nearly get him; if he doesn’t, Tony doesn’t have time to cauterize them and they grow back double. Tony is fast and accurate with his palm repulsor, but he doesn’t have the enhanced speed and training that Bucky does. He tries to stay further back, out of the Hydra’s range, but _close enough to fight_ and _safe distance_ is a very, very narrow window.

And that’s before the trouble really starts.

Bucky’s just leaping away from one Hydra head—whose teeth close on the empty space where his metal arm would be, making just a little pride bubble up in his stomach—when he feels hands shove him in towards the champing teeth, and he loses his grip on his knife and has to twist and roll to get out of the way again. His somersault carries him past yet another Hydra head, and he can feel the teeth cutting furrows in his calf before he can get free. Blood drips down his leg, hot and sticky.

“Tony, what do you think you’re doing?” he yells, outraged. He backpedals several steps, giving himself a moment to breathe as he pushes the pain away like he’d been trained.

“I’m cutting through some of them myself, the repulsor can—“

“Not _that_ ,” Bucky says, but then he stops himself. Tony’s on the other side of the Hydra right now. He couldn’t have been the one to push Bucky. Bucky turns, fearing the worst—

A young man is standing there, and Bucky doesn’t know his name but he knows his face, those furious eyes, that bitter mouth. The expression, saying _you deserve to be fed to that monster_.

Oh God.

A sharp pain in his ankle makes him stumble back and crash to the ground, and the Hydra’s teeth come so close that Bucky nearly loses another limb. A girl stands among Bucky’s dead, leg still extended from where she’d kicked him hard. Bucky tries to roll to his feet again, to run, but the strong hands of his dead seize him and hold him in place. He kicks and punches and swings wildly, but he can’t even touch his dead, let alone hurt them.

The Hydra lumbers in his direction, a dozen heads facing him with wide-open maws salivating and teeth gleaming.

Bucky sweats and thrashes harder and rolls his eyes in panic because he can’t get free, he _can’t get free, he can’t—_

All at once the cold, sharp hands of the dead vanish as another body, this one warmer and more solid, lands on top of Bucky’s, hard. All the air goes out of him and terror surges again until he looks up and sees blue eyes and it’s _Tony_ , Tony’s come for him. Bucky takes his first easy breath in minutes.

“C’mon!” Tony yells, and they scramble to their feet.

They run again, and this time it isn’t flight; it’s a retreat.

Bucky is still breathing through lingering panic, but he knows it’s not over yet.

 

*

 

They stop running, far enough away that they’ll be safe from the Hydra for a while yet, but close enough that Bucky knows Tony means to fight it again, and soon. The repulsor gauntlet is still on Tony’s hand, and Tony keeps opening and closing his armored fingers and running his other hand over them, like it’s some kind of self-comforting gesture.

“You okay?” Tony asks, breathing hard.

“What do _you_ think?” Bucky snaps. He doesn’t mean to be cruel in the face of Tony’s concern; it just slips out. Tony seems to recognize that, though. He puts his unarmored left hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, just for a second, and squeezes lightly.

Bucky shudders. He leans into the touch, just to make sure Tony knows it’s not a bad reaction. If Tony thought it was, he might not do it again.

Bucky doesn’t know why he wants Tony to do it again so badly _right now_ , in the middle of a fight. It’s not just the heat and the pressure, he thinks, although those are good too; no, something about the idea of direction, of being held in place, is making him feel hot and shivery all down his spine. He should hate that, shouldn’t he? He shouldn’t like the feeling of someone else’s hand guiding him. But oh, he does.

He shivers again, trying to shake off the feeling. It’s not time for it.

“New plan,” Tony says, and he turns so that he and Bucky are side by side but not quite touching. Bucky tells himself he doesn’t miss the contact on his neck. “He didn’t kill you!” Tony says loudly. “His hands took your lives but he’s not the one who killed you!”

“ _What are you doing_ ,” Bucky hisses, rounding on Tony. Tony looks him full in the face, unflinching.

“I’m telling the truth.”

More dead hands shove at Bucky, trying to push him away from Tony and towards the advancing Hydra.

“Tony, I killed them. I know I did, don’t make it anything less than what it was,” Bucky says, pained.

“Don’t make it less than what it was? Okay, I won’t. Hydra wanted people dead. They aimed you at those people and pulled your trigger like a gun. That’s exactly what it was.” Bucky wants to say something, but Tony gives him a quelling look. “I’m no stranger to mind control, Bucky. You want to know how Steve died? His girlfriend shot him dead on the courthouse steps. He loved her and she loved him, for years, and they scooped her mind out and made her do it all the same. And me? My brain’s a computer now. I got hacked. I killed people. I've watched it happen and I had to deal with the fallout, I’ve been _blackmailed_ with that fallout. It’s real. But it wasn’t me, and I know that. My hands did that, but unless I chose it, it _wasn’t me_. So tell me, did you choose it?”

And Bucky knows that he killed them, but he knows that it wasn’t his choice, and for the first time, that feels more important.

For the first time, Bucky doesn’t submit to his dead.

He just looks at Tony in wonder and tries to breathe through the swelling feeling in his chest.

“No,” he says, and it feels like he’s been poured out inside. “It wasn’t me.”

“Don’t tell me,” Tony says softly, and smiles. “Tell them.”

“He’s right,” says Bucky. “He’s right!” he says, louder, making sure all of his dead can hear him. He doesn’t know how to do speeches, but he does his best to channel Steve, pushing through the fear that he’ll fall flat, that he’ll just have to keep running forever. “I didn’t kill you. I did, but it wasn’t me. It was Hydra, the real-world Hydra, and that thing over there is as close as you get to the real Hydra in here. I’m still trying to make up for what I’ve done, but I didn’t kill you. You want justice, vengeance, whatever—it’s the Hydra you want.”

For a long time the dead are motionless. In the stillness, Bucky prays they aren’t about to throw him back to the Hydra; it’s coming closer with every second, and a frantic urgency is rising in the back of Bucky’s throat. His calf is throbbing and he can almost feel the sharp teeth closing on it again.

And then Maria Stark steps forward. She raises one hand, but not to strike Bucky. Softly, so softly, she rests her ghostly hand on her son’s cheek, and leans up to kiss him.

“My baby,” she says quietly, the first words Bucky has heard any of the dead utter. “For you.”

And she turns and faces the Hydra.

The rest of Bucky’s dead are slower to respond, but they follow Maria Stark. Howard stands behind her first, and then one by one the other ghosts line up beside them, standing between the Hydra and Bucky.

He braces himself, ready for the Hydra to pass through their insubstantial bodies unimpeded, but it doesn’t. Silently, the dead surround the roaring Hydra. The Hydra snaps its teeth, hundreds upon hundreds of them, but they close on nothing but air. It cannot hurt the dead. They grab at the Hydra’s many snouts and hold them closed, fighting hard to keep the monster in place while it thrashes and hisses with anger. Bucky reforms the knife in his hand, hoping that they can take the Hydra’s heads off before it manages to throw his dead clear. His leg is aching, but the pain feels strangely more like an old wound than a fresh injury.

“Quickly,” says Tony beside him.

“There are so many, I don’t know—“

“There _are_ a lot of heads,” Tony concedes, sounding just slightly amused. “But just one heart.”

“Those heads look pretty occupied right now,” Bucky says, tensing himself for a sprint. This is probably the only chance he’ll get.

Bucky darts forwards, dodging and weaving around the Hydra’s heads as they struggle with his dead. The dead manage to overcome the powerful necks of the Hydra long enough to make a gap between them, and Bucky dives for his opening. He skids and slides underneath the Hydra’s heavy body, rolls to avoid the stamping feet, plunges his knife upwards—

It’s over so quickly it’s almost anticlimactic.

 

*

 

Bucky scrambles back just in time as the Hydra’s lifeless body crashes to the ground, sending up a cloud that might be red dust or white snow. For a moment, his vision is completely blocked out by the haze, and when it settles, something is different.

It takes him a moment to realize that his dead aren’t just flickering again.

They’re gone.

The guilt is still there, or some of it—Bucky suspects it will never leave him completely—but it’s only the lightest of twinges, compared to the stomach-clenching roil that the accusing eyes of his dead inspired. And now, those eyes are gone.

Tony’s dead are still there, but they’re faint and uninterested.

And Tony—

Bucky looks between Tony and the fallen Hydra, the monster of his nightmares that can never chase him again, looks at the settling dust and the knife dissolving to nothing and the shoulder stump no longer welded to a weapon, Bucky looks and sees all of it and all he can think is that he’s _free_. The feeling is glorious and light and expanding in his chest, so huge that Bucky thinks he might burst or just float away or dissolve because there’s no way his body can contain this kind of elation. It builds inside him and he distantly wonders what his face is doing but he can’t care very much because he’s about to do _something._ He has no idea what, but he can feel the way the emotion is surging for an outlet.

He kisses Tony.

At first it’s sloppy, too much emotion and enthusiasm getting in the way of his skill, but then Tony pushes back into it and then Bucky doesn’t think—he just surrenders. He opens his mouth and leans into Tony’s body and lets him have everything he wants, everything Bucky’s feeling.

Bucky’s hand clutches at Tony’s shoulder desperately, and Tony’s fingers come up to cover his. He gentles Bucky, slides them into a rhythm that’s achingly slow and passionate, and it’s so perfect Bucky could cry, or maybe come.

Because oh God, Bucky’s hard, he’s _aroused_ , and he hasn’t felt anything sexual for years.

He’d thought he couldn’t. He’d thought Hydra had broken something in him.

Bucky whimpers into Tony’s mouth as he feels his blood pounding in his veins, swelling him harder and hotter until he thinks he can’t stand it anymore. He wants so badly and Tony gives it to him, gives him everything he could want and more. Tony’s kiss gets even lighter, pulling off every few seconds to nip at Bucky’s lips and trace them with his tongue, a tease that makes Bucky want to beg for more, and God, that shouldn’t make him harder, the idea of Tony holding back and making Bucky wait until he begs for what he wants, until Bucky’s so wound up he almost loses control at the first touch—

Tony finally pulls back to breathe, resting their foreheads together and looking searchingly at Bucky while he pants into his mouth. Bucky wants to surge back into the kiss, to never stop, but he feels the most bizarre urge to ask for permission, to beg before he’s allowed to touch.

They’re already touching, hands still linked where they’ve slid down against Tony’s chest.

Part of Bucky wants to tug against that grip, not to get away but just to see whether it will hold. He mentally shakes himself; Tony wouldn’t pin him in place, and even if he would, Bucky should hate that. He should hate any kind of restraint, after what Hydra did to him.

Shouldn’t he?

He thinks maybe these strange impulses will drive him mad before Tony’s teasing ever can. They’re not new, though it takes him a minute to retrieve the long-buried memories of wishing the pretty girl he’d taken home would put his tie to better use holding his hands in place, would sit on his face and let him please her until he couldn’t breathe and she was crying with it. Wishing the guy in the alley would pull Bucky’s hair a little more and insult him a little less while Bucky sucked him enthusiastically. Wishing, sometimes, that Steve would just _tell him what to do_ instead of just expecting him to be already decent enough to know better. Lots of old, unfulfilled wishing lurking in the back of Bucky’s head.

Apparently, Bucky’s always been weird in the head. He can’t pretend to be too shocked, really. He just wishes he knew why, wishes Tony would maybe, finally, fulfill all those old wishes. And no matter how bad Bucky is at being hopeful, well—

Tony’s the one who looked out at the wasteland and showed Bucky the potential there. It’s not a huge surprise that Bucky can look at Tony and see the same thing there in his eyes.

Bucky does meet Tony’s eyes at last—and it’s harder than it should be, some part of him wanting to defer—and he reads a question in the furrow of Tony’s brow and the slight concerned shift of his dark lashes. Now, at one step removed, Bucky realizes what he’s done.

He jumped his only companion in this dream wasteland, over the dead body of a Hydra of myth, which happens to be the monster that haunts Bucky’s worst nightmares. Without warning or explanation or anything, he kissed Tony Stark.

And Tony kissed back, took over and made it better than Bucky would have believed possible before it happened.

Bucky doesn’t regret a thing. Not here.

 

* * *

 

To say that Tony doesn’t expect Bucky to kiss him would not be entirely true.

It’s true that he’s been trying not to expect anything, not to even _form_ expectations because the very, very last thing he wants is to find himself disappointed in Bucky, even for a moment. The man’s been through so much, and he doesn’t deserve anyone telling him who he should be or how he should behave, much less a man from another universe who spent the last few months being friends with benefits with another version of _himself_. Who also, not to mention, _killed his best friend_.

So yeah, Tony’s been doing his best to manage expectation, to accept Bucky exactly as he is in the moment.

That’s not to say that he hasn’t been _hoping_.

He misses being with James, but that’s not all of it. Tony’s pathetic, unrequited, burgeoning feelings for James might’ve made him _start_ thinking of Bucky that way, but everything else? All the other feelings and wants that have cropped up here in the wasteland?

That’s all Bucky.

It’s long conversations while they rest from fleeing, so reminiscent of the early nights with Steve when they’d wake up from their respective nightmares and talk for hours in the library, except here, with Bucky, there are no secrets between them, no layers of literal and metaphorical armor. It’s that Tony can admit that _it’s my fault_ and Bucky won’t look at him like he’s blaming him, just like he understands down to his core what it’s like to feel guilt like that. It’s the way Bucky is so easily physical with Tony, touching and being touched even when it’s clear that he still feels raw and broken open inside.

And now, Bucky kisses him.

It’s a still a shock, at first, but it’s only a few seconds before Tony gives in to what he wants, what they both want. He kisses back, hard, and Bucky gives in with a kind of desperate surrender, like he wants so much but doesn’t want to be the one taking.

And Tony _loves_ to be allowed to take.

He leans further into Bucky and puts his not-inconsiderable powers to work reading Bucky, every movement, every sound, every tell. Bucky thinks he wants something hard and frantic, but that’s probably the adrenaline talking. No, the Bucky that Tony has gotten to know here in the wasteland… Tony thinks he’s probably had enough of hard and frantic. Tony thinks probably, secretly, what Bucky wants is someone who can get him to settle his mind, to make him soft and easy and maybe even domestic, though that last might be Tony’s private fantasies intruding where they’re not wanted.

So Tony makes it slow, rhythmic, teasing, and Bucky just goes _wild_ against him, giving everything up to Tony and asking for more with every line of his body. He pulls at the grip Tony has on his hand and shudders when Tony holds it for a moment, and God, Bucky doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it.

Fire rushes through Tony, hot and liquid. He has a pretty good idea of what Bucky wants from him, but Bucky has no idea and Tony can _show him_ , Tony can give him what he doesn’t even know he wants yet—

Tony pulls back, gasping for breath.

With a little space between them, the chilly air of the wasteland cools a little of the fire, lets Tony think coherently again. He knows what he wants to do to Bucky, _for_ him, but now that he’s no longer overcome with the feeling of their kiss, nervousness crops up.

Bucky kissed him in the heat of the moment, but surely his passion is cooling now, too. Maybe he’s remembering himself now, or worse, remembering _Tony_. Remembering that Tony is every bit as screwed in the head as Bucky, and in some ways worse, because he _chose_ to do what he did, knowing what would happen as a result. Remembering that Tony killed Steve Rogers, for God’s sake, and why would Bucky want to get involved with the person who did that?

Tony wants to ask if Bucky’s sure he wants to do this, but he can’t bring himself to question a choice Bucky made. He’s made few enough of those, recently.

The question just sits in Tony’s eyes while he prays the answer won’t be some variation on _what the hell did I just do here?_

That answer seems to cross Bucky’s mind for only the briefest of seconds, as he glances over at the motionless, bloody body of the dead Hydra, but then it fades away as Bucky looks Tony steadily in the eye. He doesn’t look like a man who’s having regrets; he looks like a man who’s very, very sure of who he wants.

Tony shivers.

 

*

 

They don’t talk about it then, because before long there’s the sound of lumbering, clanking footsteps far away, reminding Tony that Bucky isn’t the only one with demons to fight in this wasteland.

Tony finally drops Bucky’s hand and they step away from each other, and then his dead are back, too.

Great.

Bucky opens his mouth like he wants to say something, so Tony just gestures one hand vaguely in the direction away from the approaching mechanical monster. Maybe Bucky can fight his demon, maybe he can defeat it, but Tony just isn’t that strong. He’s never been that strong.

“Come on, we better go,” he says, and he takes off running. He thinks he hears Bucky give a sort of frustrated huff behind him, but a moment later he’s running too, and they’re running together again.

 

*

 

Bucky seems faster now.

He was always faster than Tony, but now he seems even faster than he was before, and Tony wonders if it’s because of the dead. Bucky’s are gone, and they can’t hold him back anymore. Can’t pluck at his skin and clothes and catch handfuls of his hair and grab at his ankles.

Tony watches him run, easy, light, like a gazelle, maybe, or like a great cat with the speed to hunt anything and the strength never to fear. He’s so graceful.

Tony hardly even notices until it’s finished that his easy admiration has shifted into something darker, less kind and infinitely less useful. Shame isn’t new to Tony, but it never seems to get any better. He’s supposed to be a leader, of the Avengers, of SHIELD, but it’s been such a long time since he made a decision that didn’t feel like a clothespin vote. It’s been such a long time since he hasn’t been beholden to a thousand different voices screaming at him that he wasn’t good enough to save them. Bucky freed himself from his dead and his demon in one fell swoop and now he’s free and fearless and Tony—

Tony can’t ever remember feeling like that.

Bucky turns around and circles back around Tony, keeping pace right next to him long enough to lean over and drop a quick, delighted kiss on his lips. It isn’t long enough for Tony to respond, but he makes himself smile when Bucky draws back like he isn’t being eaten up inside.

Inside he just feels weak and almost sick with shame and self-disgust because he knows all of this isn’t fair to Bucky and he’s been trying so hard not to let his feelings hurt Bucky at all. Bucky deserves so much better than the mess that is Tony’s damaged, used up heart.

He should have known better than to think that his perfect, shining moment of happiness with Bucky could last.

He always hurts the people he loves most. It’s only a matter of time.

 

*

 

There is a man, or the ghost of a man, on the horizon. Tony doesn’t recognize him, doesn’t just _know_ who he’s meant to be like he does with his own dead, so he can only assume the man is one of Bucky’s. He’s not the only man out there, but he’s the only one in clear focus.

“I thought all of your dead were resolved fighting the Hydra,” Tony says, pulling together enough breath to speak without breaking his stride. Bucky turns his head to look, and Tony can tell when his eyes light on the man on the horizon, because his brow furrows instantly. “Who is that?”

“I don’t know his name,” Bucky answers, with a thousand-yard look in his eyes. “I never did. He wasn’t exactly someone I had the time to get to know. But he’s the first man I ever killed. Wasn’t attacking any of my unit, wasn’t even a direct threat, except that he was about to jump into a tank with the rest of his men. And I shot him.”

“Why is he so far away?” Tony asks, although he thinks he knows the answer.

“I was a sniper,” Bucky says. “That’s the only way I ever saw him, far away.”

Tony realizes then that Bucky’s thousand-yard stare is more like a five-hundred-yard stare, the look of a man who has seen death at the other end of a sniper scope. He thinks maybe some guilt is too deep and too old to be banished like the Winter Soldier’s victims had been. _It was war_ , he wants to say, _it was war and you didn’t have a choice_ , but he doesn’t think it will help.

 

*

 

When they stop running, Bucky kisses Tony again. It’s a bright, eager kiss. It makes Tony think of springtime and flying over the Atlantic, chilly enough to be refreshing but not cold.

Tony does his best to kiss back, to give Bucky the kind of perfect kiss he deserves to have. He threads the fingers of his right hand into Bucky’s hair and tugs until Bucky groans into his mouth, and then when Bucky’s hand comes up to touch Tony intercepts it, holding it in place just shy of making contact. Bucky makes another sound at that, a sound of frustration that bleeds into a whimper when Tony ups the pressure on his wrist. The whimper becomes an all-out whine when Tony sinks his teeth into Bucky’s gorgeous lower lip and sucks hard.

Bucky opens his mouth a little wider, offering everything to Tony, and Tony takes it. He kisses him deeply, sealing their mouths together so that they can barely get air through their noses. Tony’s tongue explores Bucky’s palate and traces little circles on Bucky’s own tongue.

Tony bites Bucky’s tongue, and Bucky stumbles against him, his knees going out, and his weight knocks them to the ground.

And then they’re laughing, Bucky tucking his face into Tony’s collarbone as he practically _giggles_ , his body warm and shaking against Tony, who muffles his own laughter in Bucky’s hair. Being with Bucky is always perfect.

For Tony, at least.

Bucky has no basis for comparison, here in the wasteland; he could be so much happier with someone good, someone with clean hands and a heart still in one piece. He wouldn’t choose Tony if there was another choice on the table.

But Bucky _has_ chosen Tony, and so it’s Tony’s job to make sure that Bucky’s choice is worthwhile. He has to make sure Bucky gets everything he needs, everything he wants, and everything he doesn’t even know that he wants. Most importantly, he has to make himself worthy of being chosen, even if he can only do it retroactively. Because this broken man with bloodied hands is all that Bucky really has in this dream world where it’s just the two of them, so Tony has to be enough for him, and he’s willing to change himself to do it.

“Tony?” Bucky says suddenly, seeing how Tony has abruptly lost his humor.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” he lies. The last thing Bucky needs is to deal with Tony’s darker thoughts.

“This is okay, isn’t it? You…” Bucky swallows like he wants to bite back the rest of his sentence, like he doesn’t like how it’s going to sound, but then he visibly decides to say it anyway. “You do want me? Like this?”

“Of course I want you,” Tony says, perplexed. That certainly wasn’t the question he’d been expecting.

“ _Like this?_ ” Bucky repeats, and he lifts his hand. Suddenly Tony realizes that his own fingers are still wrapped tightly around Bucky’s wrist, off to the side to keep Bucky from touching. “I shouldn’t… I know I shouldn’t want it like this, but it feels… I just—“

“Shh, hey now,” Tony says soothingly. God, he’s been letting Bucky kinkshame himself just because Tony was excited to have understood something Bucky hadn’t about their relationship. That seems unutterably stupid, now. He should have realized that Bucky would conflate his kink with Hydra’s torture. He should have been able to figure it out. This needs to be fixed, now, before it does any more damage. “It’s fine, it’s good,” Tony says. “Everything in context. You like it when I hold you like that, when I take control?”

“Yes,” Bucky breathes. He’s still lying on top of Tony, and his breath is hot on Tony’s throat.

“You like it when Hydra chains you and takes control of your mind?” Tony hates himself for saying it so bluntly, and more when Bucky flinches violently against him. He doesn’t pull his wrist out of Tony’s grip, though.

“ _No_ ,” says Bucky, very firmly.

“It’s not just the restraint, or the control. It’s also about—“ _me_ , he doesn’t say, because that sounds egotistical. “About your partner. Things don’t just happen to your body, they happen in your head, too.” Bucky nods like he understands and sags against Tony in relief, a headier kind of surrender. Tony makes himself keep talking. “When you know that you trust your partner, when you open yourself up willingly, it changes how it is in your head. The same action can feel very different if it’s done… lovingly.” Again Tony regrets his word choice, but he doesn’t know how else to put it. Bucky looks at him sharply, but he doesn’t ask the obvious question, the one Tony isn’t ready to answer yet.

Good. If he had made Tony say it aloud, he might not have been able to do what he had to. Now he can do it, and he must.

It’s the only way to be worthy of someone as good as Bucky.

 

*

 

Tony slows his breathing carefully, helping relax Bucky to sleep. It doesn’t take as long as Tony expects it to at first; it’s probably the adrenaline crash. Before long, Bucky’s eyes are closed and he’s leaning on Tony’s shoulder, little puffs of sweet breath fanning over Tony’s neck with every exhale.

It’s hard to want to get up.

But Bucky, however happy he seems right now in his sleep, will undoubtedly be happier with a partner who isn’t as wrecked as Tony is. And so Tony makes himself stand, carefully helping Bucky to curl over himself so that he won’t fall. Once Bucky is secure, Tony makes himself start walking.

It hurts.

But he’ll come back, he promises himself. He’ll come back once he’s got his head on straight, once he’s solved his own problem.

Then, maybe, he’ll be enough.

 

*

 

Tony runs once he gets far enough away not to wake Bucky, his feet kicking up what might be rust red dust or powder white snow. It shouldn’t be hard to find his demon. It’s searching for him, after all. He feels cold, being away from Bucky, but he tells himself that the running is warming him up.

But between the icy fingers of the dead pulling at him from behind and the chilling thought of the demon who awaits him ahead—

He knows that he’s lying to himself.

But he’s good at that, isn’t he?

He can lie to himself and lie to Steve and lie to the whole damn world and as long as he can keep telling himself that it’s better, that it’s life over limb, he’ll be able to keep making those awful choices, over and over again. He’ll be able to keep on lying to everyone.

God, he disgusts himself sometimes.

_Sometimes._

What a joke.

This is why he needs to fight this, why he needs to win, before he can go back to Bucky. How can Bucky live with him when Tony can’t even live with himself anymore? Tony deleted the database to atone for the awful things he did in the war, but it’s not enough. Failure upon failure upon atrocity, all wiped out with just one measly act of atonement?

He wants to laugh, but he thinks if he does he might cry, so he just keeps his mouth shut.

His demon, the huge mechanical monster that Tony built himself, is trudging towards him over the horizon.

Time to suit up.

Tony focuses. For years, he kept all the suit designs exclusively in his head, too afraid of what could happen if they fell into the wrong hands. They’re still there, so many old models stored up in the back corners of his mind. He closes his eyes and pictures his own body. Line by line, he starts drawing the blueprints: metal plates, servos, hydraulics, repulsors. Every line in its place, forming up a full suit of armor. A low-grade headache begins to build.

Once the outlines are drawn, Tony focuses harder, willing the components to become solid. He starts with the framework, so that nothing will fall once he makes it solid, and then he tries to fill it in. The plating is easy enough, just solid pieces of metal. Then the moving parts settle into place, and the headache gets stronger.

He can do this. He’s not going to let a little discomfort stop him.

Tony adds the computer systems. He can feel his hands begin to shake, but he presses on. Time for repulsors. The suit needs power, or it’ll just be dead weight, but they’re complicated. Tony’s greatest achievement is becoming the greatest strain on his mind.

Ha. Tony Stark’s mind, too feeble to operate his own armor. Doesn’t that just sound familiar.

Tony focuses still harder, tracing the internal components of the repulsors, and he feels the armor plating start to slip into intangibility. His head is throbbing, but he pulls the armor back, makes it solid again. Come on, the repulsors are almost done… the left hand comes online, and then the right, and then the two jet boots… he only has the chest RT left to complete. He can do this. He has to.

Spots start to appear behind his eyelids, and he ignores them.

Come on…

Tony screams from the pain and greys out, coming so close to unconsciousness he can taste it. He falls to his knees and the armor slips back into nonexistence. He failed.

He was always going to fail, because he just wasn’t good enough.

He’s never good enough.

“No, you’re not, are you?” says Steve, and Tony starts. The dead Steve is standing above him, looking down with contempt. As Tony watches, blood spreads over the familiar uniform, filling the white stripes over his belly with red while rips open up in the fabric. Tony knows every tear and every spot of dirt and blood. He memorized them when he sat beside Steve’s body, confessing, apologizing. Saying goodbye. “You’ve never been good enough,” says Steve.

“No,” Tony says. He’s never pretended otherwise, but he always liked the way Steve used to tell him that it wasn’t true.

At least now Steve’s being honest.

“And you never will be. Do you know why?” Steve asks. Tony just looks up at him, his vision blurring. “It’s because you’re a bad _person_ , underneath everything. All the good deeds and hard work in the world can’t change what’s under all of your masks.”

The tears fall unchecked down Tony’s face, and his hands tremble at his sides. Tony has spent days hunting down his next bottle instead of hunting criminals, has had to fight and struggle with his own mind even to know what the right thing was. Steve was never weak like that. A good man wouldn’t be weak like that.

“I know,” he says.

“So why do you keep up this selfish crusade? Always trying to fight the _bad guys_ , as though you aren’t one of them! As though anything you could do would make you worthy of him,” Steve sneers. “As though _anyone_ could forget all the things you’ve done. No one could love what you are.”

“I know,” Tony says. His chest is hitching with the sobs he won’t let escape. The ground is wet with the tears dripping from his face.

“You called me your best friend, and you killed me, and now you have the audacity to go after _my_ best friend! You’re a monster, Tony Stark.” Steve is leaning closer, almost spitting with fury, and for a moment Tony is watching him through the bars on the helicarrier again, keeping his helmet on because it’s the only armor he can trust anymore. He’s sitting beside Steve’s dead body and crying all the tears he has in him and answering Steve’s last question too late, far too late.

It wasn’t worth it. None of it was worth it.

“I know what I am,” Tony says.

“Do you _really_ , though?” Steve says cruelly. “Are you sure you understand the depth, the degree, of what lives under your skin?”

“He doesn’t have a damn clue,” says a furious voice, and all at once Steve is gone.

 

*

 

It’s Bucky. Of course it’s Bucky. His hand is gripping Tony’s shoulder, driving away Tony’s dead.

“What were you thinking? Of all the idiotic—“ Bucky yells, biting each word off sharply with frustration. His grip is tight enough to hurt, and his voice—Oh God, he sounds furious, and Tony only wanted to be enough for him, never meant to hurt him or upset him, never meant—

But he always hurts the people he loves most. He should have known.

Tony curls into himself and holds his breath to keep himself quiet, but he can’t stop his body from shaking or the tears from dripping down, God he’s so weak, why can’t he just get control of himself? Bucky deserves someone so much stronger than this. Above him, Bucky takes a long, dragging breath in and out, in and out. Tony can hear the air whistling where Bucky has gritted his teeth. At last he speaks, carefully measured.

“No, Tony, I’m sorry. That’s not what you need from me right now.”

What Tony needs?

He runs out of air and he has to release the breath he’s holding. A loud, broken sound escapes with it and Tony’s chest clenches with shame as he breathes hard, trying to get himself back under control. It’s not about what Tony needs, or what he’s feeling. He doesn’t know why Bucky said it was. Bucky’s the one who was a victim of a thousand different tortures for decades; Tony just made bad decisions. A lot of bad decisions. Tony’s the one who couldn’t face what he did, couldn’t own up to it like he was supposed to.

Tony has no right to this— this— concern. He’s not enough, and he was never going to be. Trying was a waste of time.

“Y-you should just go,” he forces out, squeezing his wet eyes shut. “You shouldn’t have to stay here with me.”

“Tony,” Bucky says, and his voice is so gentle that Tony starts crying all over again and he doesn’t even understand why. “Tony, look at me. Look at me, sweetheart.”

 _Sweetheart_ just breaks Tony a little more. Hearing it in James’ voice when it’s been so long since anyone—

He makes himself look up, hating the way his face must look. Red, blotchy, tear-streaked. Hideous and weak. There’s no way he can hide that weakness anymore.

“Tony, I’m not angry with you. I’m upset that you put yourself in danger, and that you didn’t tell me,” Bucky concedes, and oh, one more person Tony hurt by keeping things to himself, isn’t that just perfect. But Bucky isn’t done. “I’m not angry with you. I care about you a lot, and I’m… I’m worried about you, sweetheart. What you did for me, when we fought the Hydra, when we… resolved my dead, that was amazing. Give me a chance to help you, too.”

“I shouldn’t need— You defeated your demons. You, you fought them and you won and you’re so happy without them, I can see it, and I— you wanted me, but you deserve someone strong enough to do that, too.” Tony can’t look at Bucky’s eyes anymore, can’t bear to see whatever expression is in his eyes. He looks at the ground. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t even stand up to them.”

“Tony, I _didn’t_ defeat my… my demons, you called them,” Bucky says, and Tony looks back up in surprise. “I ran from them, and I would have run from them forever. When I finally stopped _because of you_ , because you said you’d stay with me… what I killed was some monster projection of them that my brain cooked up to torment me. They’re still in here.” He cocks his head, like he might tap his temple if he had a free hand to do it with. “The only difference is now, I know they’re wrong. About me, about what I did. Now I know how to fight them.”

Well, of course Bucky’s demons were wrong. It should be obvious to anyone who understands the situation that he wasn’t responsible for those deaths, for the growth of Hydra. Bucky isn’t culpable.

The difference is that Tony made his mistakes himself. It wasn’t Hydra, it wasn’t brainwashing.

“They’re right about me, though,” he mutters.

“Don’t you see? That’s exactly what I thought, until you made me see it differently,” Bucky says. “They were wrong about me, and I’d bet everything I have that your demons were wrong about you, too.”

“That’s not a lot,” Tony says, bitter and a little cruel. Bucky just sloughs it off like it doesn’t matter. He slides his hand down Tony’s arm to grip his fingers lightly. His hand is very warm. His eyes are too, when Tony manages to meet them.

“Then I’d bet my heart. I didn’t do any of it alone. What makes you think you have to?”

 

*

 

This time when they run, it’s together. Bucky only has the one arm, but apparently Hydra super-assassin training counts for something, because he manages to sweep Tony off his feet, literally, and within seconds Tony is nestled securely against Bucky’s back, piggybacked like he doesn't weigh anything at all, and he has no idea how. Bucky’s hand is tucked under Tony’s ass to hold him in place, which feels nice.

Then Bucky’s running, somehow not losing much speed even when he nearly doubles his weight, and Tony has a crazy half-formed thought about Sam carrying Frodo up Mount Doom. He wonders what the Ring would be in this situation.

Maybe Tony’s demons? His dead? It’s not a perfect allegory.

But it is perfectly comfortable. Bucky’s back is strong, padded with thick muscle under Tony’s chest, and his gait is smooth enough that Tony can rest his head on Bucky’s shoulder with no fear of being jarred. Tony’s mind is still spinning out like a crashing helicopter, but at least his body is content. Or rather, his mental construction of a body, probably, given that this is some kind of dream world.

In any case, Bucky feels good against him.

After a little while, Bucky starts singing again, the crazy dirty wonderful songs he must’ve picked up in the war. Tony knows it’s a distraction, and to be honest he doesn’t care much for the dirtier lyrics right now—the media will say what it will, but Tony honestly hasn’t had much of a sex drive for months now, and what he had he saved up for James—but that doesn’t mean Tony doesn’t enjoy the singing.

Bucky’s voice is low and rich, a little unsteady because of his faster breathing, but warm all the same. The simple melodies vibrate through both of their bodies like a connection, reminding Tony of what Bucky had said, the best words Tony’s heard in what feels like forever.

Neither of them is alone, because they have each other.

“We should do this more often,” Bucky says abruptly at the end of a song, and Tony can feel the words in Bucky’s ribcage. Tony waits, but Bucky doesn’t continue. Well, he’ll bite.

“Why’s that?” Tony asks.

“It feels…” There’s a flush spreading over the back of Bucky’s neck now. It’s very pretty, but it can’t be from the running. “It feels nice,” Bucky continues. “Like I’m… this is gonna sound bad, but it feels like I’m useful to you. And that’s nice.”

Bucky’s tone of voice makes it clear that by _nice_ he means something more like _erotic_.

Well, that was about the last thing Tony was expecting. Tony knows that strength has nothing to do with it, but some part of his mind still reels with amazement that even after everything, after Tony has been conclusively proven weak in every possible way, Bucky can still feel submissive to him. It was one thing when they were kissing and Tony clearly had a lot more recent experience, but now, when Bucky is rescuing him from his own mental breakdown, it’s hitting Tony a lot harder.

Tony’s weakness and failure doesn’t make him any less himself, or any less capable of being dominant. It doesn’t make him any less desirable to Bucky. The realization is like throwing off a stranglehold and breathing through burning lungs for the first time in minutes; it’s painful, but relief overwhelms the pain.

He wants to say something like _really, go on_ , dropping his voice into that low, authoritative register his subs always loved, wants to see if he can work Bucky up enough to make running painful for him, wants to ask faux-coyly if Bucky will let Tony kiss it better. Wants to hold Bucky’s hips down while he does.

But Tony can’t get ahead of himself; he’s far too messed up to try to start anything right now. He starts planning things out in his head though, putting his IQ to work wondering what exactly Bucky would like, how Tony should make it happen if Bucky agrees. It’s more fanciful than a real plan, but more serious than a daydream.

In some ways, it’s calming. Almost meditative, except for the simmering arousal.

He still has that thought kicking around in his head, the one that says he needs to be better for Bucky, but if Bucky can feel like this, can still want him, even knowing what the inside of Tony’s head really looks like—well, Tony thinks, maybe he doesn’t have to fix himself completely. Maybe he doesn’t have to be already perfect in order to have something good with someone he cares about so much already, and more every minute.

Tony settles himself against Bucky’s back and allows himself to think that maybe, together they’ll be okay.

 

* * * 

 

Tony is quiet, and Bucky is worried.

In the moment, it had been easy, so easy, to admit to the way holding Tony made him feel. The admission itself had made him feel useful, too—Tony didn’t trust himself, so trusting him first, showing him that he was worthy of that trust, felt heady and sweet to Bucky. He trusted Tony completely, and he still does if he’s truthful, but Tony’s silence wakes a doubt in the back of his brain, wondering if it’s really as okay as Tony had claimed it was. _Everything in context_ , he had said; is this the wrong context? Probably, Bucky thinks—Tony has just undergone nothing less than emotional torture.

Tony’s arms tighten around him and he nuzzles into the back of Bucky’s neck, and the tension in his muscles uncoils a little. Tony’s safe, and content. It helps.

But at the same time, part of his brain is kicking him for worrying at all about these strange things he likes, saying that it’s selfish to have his own anxieties when Tony’s blatant self-hatred is so much more serious.

Logically, Bucky can tell that that thought’s bullshit, but the unruly corners of his mind are no more logical than Tony’s dead. Bucky doesn’t believe for a moment that Tony is actually responsible for the deaths of the hundreds or maybe thousands of people who had filled the crowd around him, any more than Bucky thinks he himself is responsible for Hydra’s victims anymore, but that’s not the point.

The dead don’t follow them because they are to blame; they follow them because they blame themselves.

And somewhere along the way, Tony started blaming himself so much that he lost sight of who Steve Rogers is—or rather was, in Tony’s universe. That hurts to think about, but it’s clear that it’s hurting Tony more, so—

Nope. There’s that illogical thought again, saying that Bucky doesn’t get to be hurt because Tony is currently more hurt. Well, that’s ridiculous.

They’re both hurt. There’s more than enough pain to go around.

Bucky thinks for a moment about how lovely it would be if there _weren’t_ , if pain had to be rationed like chocolate or nylon back in the war. He doesn’t think he’d feel bad about nicking Tony’s share, if it were.

As it is, Bucky just holds Tony tighter, and keeps running.

 

*

 

Eventually it feels like they’ve run far enough—Tony sometimes calculates the distances and the time they’ll have to rest, but Bucky just uses his intuition—and Bucky stops running, setting Tony down gently on the soft red or white ground. It’s strange; he feels tired from the running, but he doesn’t feel very much _specific_ muscle fatigue. Like he’s tired because he knows he should be after that kind of exercise, rather than because he really is.

He’s not going to question it, though, any more than he’s going to look too hard at the fact that they don’t seem to need to eat.

Bucky sits beside Tony and wraps his arm around him, tugging until Tony leans onto him and rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder. He loves being Tony’s pillow, and he suspects it’s for the same reason he enjoyed carrying Tony. He feels… important, almost, when he’s being useful to Tony, even if that’s kind of backwards. A thrill goes through Bucky’s belly when Tony snuggles in closer, using Bucky’s heat as well as his presence.

“Hey, Tony,” he says, quietly enough that if Tony’s drifting off already he’ll be free to ignore it.

“Hmm?” Tony replies immediately. His head turns on Bucky’s shoulder so that his blue eyes can slant up to Bucky’s face. It’s an odd angle, and Bucky finds it irrationally charming.

“Are you okay?” Bucky begins, and then cuts himself off, shaking his head. “No, of course you’re not. I mean… are you okay with me? We’re still—“

“You mean the kissing?” Tony says. He sounds amused, which is good, but not what Bucky was going for.

“Not… not _just_ the kissing,” corrects Bucky. He can feel himself blushing in the tips of his ears. “I just… I care about you a lot, Tony, I told you that, and I… I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t overstepping, or anything. I just want to help you, like you helped me.” Tony sucks in air.

“Don’t make it a debt thing. Please don’t,” he says. There’s a poorly masked pain in his voice that hurts to hear.

“I’m _not_ , I promise,” says Bucky too loudly.

“Well, good,” says Tony awkwardly. “I… I care about you too, you know. I’m the worst at accepting help, the actual worst, but I can try. I’ll try.”

“You better,” says Bucky. It’s fierce still, but good-naturedly so, and he leans down toward Tony. He wants to kiss him, because Tony looks like he needs it. Needs something comfortable, good, familiar, to reassure him after the awful things that happened earlier. What Tony needs and what Bucky wants are inextricable.

They kiss slowly, gently, without the rush of adrenaline or even much of the desire from their earlier kisses, only sweetness and reassurance between them. Bucky sinks into it and lets Tony direct their pace. It’s perfect.

After a few minutes they stop, not so much breaking apart as pulling back, the connection between them stretching like taffy, intact even when their mouths are no longer touching.

They sleep.

 

*

 

“Tony?” Bucky says the next day, getting his attention. They’ve been awake for a while, but they don’t need to run yet. Bucky ran a long way the day before, so they’re getting a nice lie-in, leaning on each other and occasionally kissing just because they can. It seems like Tony is doing much better now that his emotional distress and exhaustion have had a chance to subside.

“Hmm?” Tony says, a perfect mirror of their last conversation. It makes Bucky shiver a little, but this is important.

“I just wanted to say… It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it right now, but… I know Steve. If anybody knows him well, I’d be one of them, right?” asks Bucky, but it’s mostly rhetorical.

“Sure,” Tony agrees.

“I just… that _thing_ , the one that was hurting you—“ _torturing you_ , Bucky means, but he doesn’t want to say the word— “You know that it wasn’t Steve, right?”

“What?” Tony says. He sounds perplexed, which is a dagger right into Bucky’s heart.

“It wasn’t Steve. Whatever guilt you’re feeling… you have a right to feel it, even though I don’t think you’re to blame,” Bucky says, and carefully doesn’t react to the widening of Tony’s eyes as Bucky says that he _doesn’t_ blame him. “But I don’t want you getting so far into your own head with this that you forget who your dead really were. I don’t think they would blame you like you blame yourself. Stevie… the Steve I knew wouldn’t say those things to you even if they were true. And he’d never, ever hit somebody who’s down. He can’t stand bullies.”

Tony sucks in a breath, shocked and pained. Bucky wonders if maybe he hadn’t been supposed to talk about _the incident_ , if there was some unwritten rule that he hadn’t known about. Or maybe Tony's thinking of something else altogether. Social niceties will probably never be easy for him again.

“No,” Tony says. There’s a hitch in his voice. “He never could, could he?”

“Tony?” Bucky says, concerned. He does Tony the courtesy of not trying to see his face while his voice sounds like that, so that Tony won’t feel that he has to hide his emotions. That’s not a social nicety, he thinks, that’s just common sense. Right? He can’t help holding Tony tighter, though, pulling him in close enough that he can turn his nose into Tony’s hair.

“I’m fine, I’m good,” Tony says, which is a blatant lie and they both know it. His voice is more under control now, though, so Bucky lets it go. They sit side by side in silence for a long while.

For the first time, Bucky wishes he had the metal arm back, just because it would be easier to hold Tony properly if he had two hands. He smiles a little to himself as he thinks it; he knows he doesn’t need that arm to be able to hurt people, but he thinks wanting it to help people might be a sign that he’s healing.

He hopes so. Tony’s not the only one who has trouble trusting himself.

 

*

 

They’re very quiet for the next few days. They run, and sleep, and kiss every now and then, softly, but not very many words pass between them. Once in a while, Tony takes hold of Bucky’s wrist and Bucky’s breath shortens with anticipation, but Tony never does anything else, so Bucky just lets himself relax into it, trusting Tony to take care of things. He slumps against Tony’s shoulder and breathes him in while Tony restrains his wrist, holds him safely in place. Some part of him knows that he could always break Tony’s grip if he really wanted to, but when Tony holds him it’s like that knowledge goes away to some remote corner of Bucky’s mind where he’s no longer aware of it, and it stops feeling true.

Bucky thinks he might purr with contentment, if he could.

The only thing in the world he could ask for is more happiness for Tony, and maybe some for Steve back home, but he’s undoubtedly doing better now that he doesn’t have to chase Bucky down anymore.

When they sleep, Bucky finds that he sleeps more deeply than he did before. It’s still not an easy sleep, not by any means—he still sees his dead behind his eyelids when he closes them, and it’s easy to forget that the guilt is misplaced—but it’s much more restful than it was before. Sometimes, they even feel safe enough to lie down to sleep.

Still, Bucky does wake when he hears quiet sounds of distress from Tony. Ever since Tony first took hold of Bucky’s wrist while they kissed, it’s like Bucky’s whole body has been attuned to Tony’s, some part of him always paying attention, looking for things that Tony needs and Bucky might be able to give him. When Bucky comes to consciousness, his first realization is that he and Tony aren’t touching. And if they aren’t touching, Tony must be seeing his dead.

Bucky panics. He panics, but he does it quietly, without moving, as he opens his eyes just enough to peer out through his lashes. Tony isn’t touching him, but he hasn’t left this time.

Bucky looks, and he sees Tony sitting a few feet away, far enough to be deliberate. His dead are ranged around them. It might be Bucky’s imagination, but there seem to be fewer of them than there were before. One of them is very close to Tony, and it’s not Steve. It’s a young woman Bucky doesn’t recognize. She’s beautiful, small but very fierce, and she’s whispering something comforting in Tony’s ear that sounds like Japanese as she strokes his hair. Some part of Bucky wonders whether the Tony Stark of _his_ universe can speak Japanese, too, but mostly he feels like he’s intruding on something private. The urge to close his eyes is powerful, but his concern for Tony makes him resist.

“I love you,” the Japanese woman says, in English this time. Tony says it back, and the look in his eyes is something powerful, a deep, strange emotion that Bucky hasn’t seen on his face before. It is at once the gentleness of a fond kitten and the intensity of a wildfire, and it transforms Tony’s face. He’s always beautiful, but Bucky has the bizarre thought that this expression makes Tony look more like _himself_ than he ever has before.

Then, before Bucky’s eyes the woman fades away. Resolved, like Bucky’s dead had been. Tony’s tears fall thicker when she disappears, and then Bucky does close his eyes. He wills himself to sleep.

“Bucky,” Tony murmurs, and Bucky’s eyes snap back open. Tony knows he’s awake. “Her name was Rumiko. I would have married her,” he whispers, and scoots back in close to Bucky. “She deserved better than to be a mindless ghost to accuse me with the rest. Thank you for giving her back to me. She was… she was one of the strongest people I ever knew. Decked a man for me, once. And she never let me wallow too much, no matter how bad things got.”

Bucky says nothing, but he listens, and lets Tony cry.

 

*

 

Bucky wakes up a few more times in the middle of the night. Tony doesn’t cry again, but Bucky can always sense when he’s gone all the same. It’s the same each time Bucky finds himself aware in the middle of rest.

Tony will be sitting close by, or kneeling, but never standing. He will be speaking with his dead in a low voice, or he will be staring silently at them, or he will be tracing figures in the dust like he’s solving a complicated math problem. Tony isn’t what’s consistent, not really.

The dead are. It was hard for Bucky to judge at first, but now it’s obvious: with every precious hour of rest Tony forgoes among his dead, more and more of them are resolved.

There’s not a lot Bucky can do to help Tony with this, not unless Tony asks him for help and tells him what he needs, so it’s times like this that Bucky reaches down to his own calf and fingers the deep scars there from the Hydra’s teeth. Five long knots of scar tissue on one side, and four on the other, where those massive jaws had tried to clamp down on him. The wound had healed in what feels like a blink, in retrospect, but it left a scar behind to join the litany of others on Bucky’s skin. They’re probably ugly, but all Bucky can think when he looks at them is _I survived that_.

He can’t help until Tony tells him what he needs, but he can put his fingers into the tooth marks, five and four, and remember what that first surge of victory tasted like. He can have faith that Tony will taste it himself, soon enough.

 

*

 

Bucky doesn’t say anything to Tony about the dead who are clearly disappearing more every day, but he can’t help himself noticing.

Tony is tired often, because he gets less rest than he used to, and it’s clear that the resolution process is taking an emotional toll on him. Bucky doesn’t _hear_ Tony crying again, but he’s sure that it happens at least sometimes, because on those days—or what passes for days here in the wasteland—Tony starts out very subdued. Bucky would say that he was almost unlike himself, except that Bucky has come to know Tony Stark very well here in their shared dreamworld. He knows that this quiet, hurting Tony is in many ways more real than the brash attitude he often puts on.

But at the same time, resolving his dead seems to be good for Tony. Bucky doesn’t kid himself that Tony will be able to take care of all of this by himself, but already the change in Tony is lovely. He relaxes more, he smiles wider, and more often than not he decides to start off the “morning” with a sweet, bright kiss. It’s good to see him happier.

Bucky had said once that he would bet his heart that Tony was a better person than he thought he was. He still knows he’s right about Tony, but he’s starting to think that his heart would have gone to Tony either way.

 

*

 

They collapse to the ground together, panting from running, and then suddenly they’re kissing. Bucky doesn’t remember the transition, or the first moment their lips touched; all he knows is that one moment they were finally letting their muscles sag with relief, and the next, they were rolling together on the ground and gasping for breath into each others’ mouths. The kiss is hot and intense, so unlike the gentle, comforting contact they’ve had for the last few days that Bucky thinks it might drive him crazy.

Then Tony takes hold of Bucky’s wrist, and Bucky _knows_ that it will. Tony rolls on top and pins Bucky’s arm to the ground, and then takes merciless advantage of the fact that _he_ has both of his hands, running the other one up and down Bucky’s body. He threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair and tugs as he surges back into the kiss, and Bucky’s eyes roll back in pleasure.

“ _Tony_ ,” he whines, and if he were more coherent he’d be ashamed of the high, needy sound of his voice.

“Right here, honey,” Tony says into his mouth, before moving off to scrape his teeth over Bucky’s jaw. Anticipation is like a stretched elastic in Bucky’s gut, winding tighter and tighter as Tony’s teeth get closer to the pulse in Bucky’s throat.

“Please?” he breathes, but it’s an honest request even despite his body’s demands.

“What’s that?” Tony asks. His voice has dropped a register in arousal, and it makes Bucky shudder against him. Their groins are close but not quite touching, and the tease is driving Bucky wild. “I need you to ask me for what you want, honey. Use your words.”

Bucky remembers abruptly what he had been trying to say, though the words stick in his throat as he looks up at Tony, gorgeous and intimidating as he looms over Bucky. His mouth works a few times, opening and closing when he tries to work up spit in his suddenly dry throat. Eventually, the words come and Bucky manages to push them out, though they sound weak and fragile in a way that’s very unlike Bucky, but somehow just makes him feel hotter.

“Bite me,” he says. And then, to be polite, “please.”

“Mm,” Tony says approvingly. “If that’s what you want…”

He slides his lips down Bucky’s throat, so soft that he’s barely touching and Bucky feels like he’s on fire, like every nerve is exposed and laid open for Tony to play as he chooses.

“Please,” Bucky says again, when Tony’s teeth are not forthcoming. He can feel his pulse pounding under Tony’s hot, damp breath.

Tony bites down, and Bucky has to stifle a scream. The teeth digging into his skin are sharp and hard and _perfect_ , better than he could have imagined. His back arches hard and his eyes squeeze shut and he can feel the drag in his pants as his cock jerks almost painfully hard. The pressure on Bucky’s wrist increases as Tony has to apply real force to keep him down, and the realization that he _is_ keeping him down makes Bucky whine in the back of his throat. His hips want to roll up toward Tony’s but Tony hasn’t said he could, so Bucky restrains himself, and somehow that just heats him up more.

All of a sudden Tony pulls back completely and the cold air of the wasteland rushes in between them. Bucky’s mind clears quickly and unpleasantly; he misses the wanting haze as soon as it’s gone.

“Why’d you stop?” he pants, looking confusedly up at Tony and trying to ignore the flip of his stomach when he catches a flash of Tony's teeth. 

“You want this?” Tony asks. Bucky just gives him a flat look and gestures down at his very, very hard cock. He misses the grip on his wrist almost more than the touch of Tony’s mouth. So, pointedly, Bucky stretches his arm back out above his head, flattening his own wrist to the ground in invitation. Tony doesn’t take the hint, though, and Bucky feels sort of crestfallen.

“Tony? Is something wrong?” he asks. He wants to get back to what they were doing, but more than that he wants to take care of Tony. Though, to be honest, he isn't sure that those things are entirely different.

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. It’s just that… well, Bucky,” Tony begins, his voice slipping into a crisp, matter-of-fact tone that shouldn’t excite Bucky like it does. “You want to have sex with me, I want to have sex with you, so far so good.” He pauses for Bucky to nod expectantly. “It’s just that _this_ kind of sex is different. The kind where you let me take control and push you around. It’s been… a while, but I’ve had that kind of sex before, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you haven’t.”

“Yeah, there was lots of time for stepping out while I was brainwashed in cryosleep,” Bucky says, and he’s pleased to see the little upward quirk of Tony’s lips.

“You’d be surprised,” Tony mutters, but then he shakes it off. “This kind of power dynamic does things to your head. It makes you feel powerless. I’ve been on both sides of the dynamic, so I know that it’s a good kind of powerless, but I also know that if your partner doesn’t explain things to you properly, it can start to feel a little too real. When we do this, you give me the right to take control of you, but you also give me the responsibility to take care of you. I don’t ever want you to feel like you don’t have the power to stop me or say no just because I’m in charge.”

“I can’t imagine—“

“I couldn’t either,” Tony says sharply. There’s a world of pain locked away behind his clear blue eyes, and it makes Bucky want to _destroy_ whoever made him feel like he couldn’t say no. “Please, just promise me that you’ll stop me if you ever need to. Even if you just want to. If there’s anything at all you don’t like, please don’t let it just happen because you think _I_ want it. I don’t… I don’t think I could bear that. We need to trust each other for this to work.”

Bucky looks at him evenly, tries to put reassuring steel into his watery spine as he leans up toward Tony. He presses their lips together softly and then draws back.

“I promise, Tony,” he says solemnly.

Tony’s breath rushes out in relief, and intent creeps back into his gaze.

 

*

 

They don’t have sex right then. It turns out that Tony actually made a mistake in his calculation of their safe window while he was distracted by Bucky’s mouth, something that makes Bucky happier than it probably should. In any case, they find themselves having to run again before they can really get into it.

The mood isn’t a total loss, though. Tony runs faster than he used to, now that he’s not dragging quite so many of his dead around, and Bucky’s more than happy to carry him every now and then. Tony’s body is _very_ comfortable against his, and Tony has no qualms about rolling his hips into the small of Bucky’s back just to laugh at the way it makes Bucky stumble and have to work to regain the rhythm of his run.

Then they get to a safe distance—Tony triple-checks his calculations—and they stop running, and there is a long, breathless moment where they both just drink each other in, only touching where one of Tony’s fingers is at Bucky’s hip to keep the dead away, and knowing what’s about to happen.

“Tony?” Bucky says, trying to spur him into action. He wants Tony to be the one to make the first move; it feels like that’s what should happen, for Tony to be properly in control. More than that, he thinks Tony is probably more nervous than he’s willing to let on, and Bucky wants to allay any doubt he can; if he can do that by submitting, by giving himself over to Tony, so much the better. But instead of touching, Tony just looks him up and down appraisingly, lingering on the muscles visible through the shapeless, red-white clothes that blend into the wasteland. Bucky hasn’t given a lot of thought to the ways his time as an assassin changed his body—aside from the obvious, the arm—but right now he’s incredibly conscious of the muscle mass he’s gained. He’s still flexible and lithe, but his build is much more solid than it used to be, and he shivers to know that Tony’s appreciating it.

“Strip,” Tony instructs, and Bucky shivers harder. But this is something he knows how to do—he knew this even back in Brooklyn, when he impressed the girls by knowing he was sexy, and knowing how to show it off to turn them on like they deserved instead of just going for it.

Bucky pulls off the shirt first, lifting the hem to display a long, slow stretch of his abdominal muscles. He flexes his bicep a lot more than he actually needs to in the process of tugging the shirt over his head, but it feels more sexy than ridiculous when he sees Tony’s eyes track the motion hungrily. Bucky’s left side is exposed now, too, messy scars and stump and all, but Tony doesn’t look disgusted. As a matter of fact, his eyes barely linger there at all, much more interested in the curves of Bucky’s pectorals and the play of light and shadow as he twists to toss the shirt behind him.

The shirt is gone the moment it hits the ground, fading into dust the exact same color as itself, and Bucky blinks in surprise, but then he turns back to something more important.

He works on the pants next. Pants are harder than shirts to manage with just one hand, but he’s trying to strip slowly anyway, so he doesn’t stress about it. He does feel a little self-conscious as his cock is exposed, already firming up more than he thinks it should from that one finger Tony has on his hip, but Bucky can _see_ Tony’s pupils dilate as he watches, and it makes Bucky swell just a little more.

“Bucky, let me tell you that I _absolutely_ like what I see. In fact, I’d like to see a little more. Give me a twirl,” Tony instructs.

Bucky kicks his pants away—they vanish, too—and then he turns, slowly, trying to show all of him to best advantage. Tony doesn’t move his finger as Bucky rotates, so it trails tantalizingly over his hipbone and across the small of his back until the fingernail scores a hot line over Bucky’s other hip. Bucky can’t help a full-body shudder when the end of his turn carries that finger through the trail of hair on his belly, and Tony smirks at him.

Then he stops still and looks at Bucky expectantly, while Bucky just looks back with a feeling of profound confusion and a frisson of something hotter when he realizes that he’s just going to stand there until Tony tells him what to do. Tony doesn’t need to take control, because Bucky’s already given it up, and he hadn’t even realized he was doing it until he had.

“Well?” Tony says, in a rich, measured voice like fire down Bucky’s spine. “Don’t you want to see me, too?”

“Yes.” Bucky swallows.

“Ask me,” Tony says sharply. When Bucky doesn’t respond immediately, Tony’s fingernail digs into the soft, sensitive skin just forward of his hip, and Bucky can’t help but roll his hips into the contact. “Ask. _Beg me_ ,” Tony hisses. Bucky’s heart starts to race and he trips over his tongue, something that hasn’t happened since he was sixteen.

“T-Tony, please. Please, I… I want you to take off your clothes. Too. Please,” Bucky says again, feeling awkward and hot, and he flushes to realize how quickly he’s been reduced to stuttering and desperate, and to realize how much he _likes_ it.

“Because you want to see me, or because you want us to match?” Tony says very neutrally. An honest question, so Bucky gives it the thinking it deserves.

“Because you’re gorgeous,” he says, “and because you like… me, and I wanted to see—“

“You wanted to see how you affect me?” Tony asks. He sounds almost surprised, but pleased, and his pleasure makes something warm surge in Bucky’s chest. “You’ve had a lot of that, haven’t you? People who tell you to do things and only care that you do them, don’t care about _you_ at all, except as a tool. Success affected them, but _you_ didn’t. Well, I assure you that you’re affecting _me_ , plenty. Hand on my hip,” he orders, and Bucky’s hand complies automatically, without thought.

With the new contact between them, Tony is free to let go of Bucky. Bucky’s sorry to feel the touch go, but he can’t make himself regret it too much, not when Tony uses the opportunity to pull off his own clothes in brisk, efficient movements. Where Bucky’s stripping had felt like submission, like giving something to Tony, this action doesn’t seem to be for any more complex purpose than getting Tony’s clothes off. He doesn’t look any more vulnerable naked than he had dressed. He’s taller than the Tony of Bucky’s universe, and his skin is without scars—almost too perfect—and he’s so beautiful that Bucky doesn’t think he could look away if his life was at stake. The rigid command in Tony’s posture makes him look not quite a warrior, not quite a businessman, but completely in control and unashamed.

“Mm, yeah, I know you like what you see,” Tony says, with another dirty smirk that makes Bucky’s cock jerk as he drags his eyes back up to Tony’s face. He can’t quite meet Tony’s eyes, though. “No, you can take a look, honey, go ahead. Look how hard you’re making me,” he purrs, tangling fingers in Bucky’s hair to direct his gaze downward.

At the sight of Tony’s gorgeous cock getting so thick and flushed, knowing that it’s all for _Bucky_ , knowing that’s what Bucky’s appearance does for Tony, Bucky can’t help a whine in his throat, needy and wanting.

He wants to do more for Tony. He wants Tony to let him.

“Please, Tony, please,” Bucky says, words flowing out of him unbidden. “I want—I want—“

“What do you want, honey?” Tony murmurs, tilting Bucky’s head back up to look at his face. Tony’s steely blue eyes are more intense than Bucky can take. He looks back, dumbly, for several moments, groping for words that don’t seem to want to come. He doesn’t know what he wants, just that he wants to keep doing this. He wants—

“Whatever you want,” Bucky gasps, the words barely more than air. “I want to do what you want. I want to be… good for you _,”_ he finishes, still more quietly, almost ashamed. He’s not sure why, though. Shame is hard to reach standing before Tony Stark’s unabashed appreciation.

“Oh,” Tony says in a small voice. It’s like he’s talking to himself more than Bucky, which is a little bit uncomfortable, a little jarring, to think of Tony talking like Bucky’s not there, oh, Bucky doesn’t like that thought at all—but then Tony’s attention is right back on him, focused as ever, gaze hot as a welding torch. “No, that’s good, baby. That’s really good, actually, I just wasn’t expecting you to be so… open, so soon. I’m glad you want to be good for me,” he says, and there’s a little bit of hoarseness in the rich sound of his voice that makes Bucky quiver with arousal again. “I’m sure I can think of a way to give you the opportunity.”

Bucky meets Tony’s eyes for just a moment, difficult as it is, and sees the naked pleasure on his face. He hopes his own eyes convey his feelings as well—what Tony’s saying, what he’s offering, is all Bucky wants. It’s everything.

“Please,” he says, or he tries to, but his throat doesn’t seem to be working. He’s never had sex that felt this _consuming_ before, and they’ve barely even touched.

Tony just smirks and takes a step back from Bucky, so that Bucky has to stretch his arm out to keep his hand on Tony’s hip like he was told. Then Tony folds himself gracefully to the ground and stretches out, his torso a long, curving line where he props himself up on his elbows. Bucky has to crouch to keep his hold, and he can’t stop drinking in the new, mouthwatering angle of Tony’s body. His eyes keep returning to Tony’s cock, proudly jutting up from between his legs and hard enough that Bucky’s cock aches in sympathy. Bucky wants to touch himself badly, wants to touch Tony more, but Tony hasn’t said he could let go of his hip yet, so he doesn’t.

“Kneel over me,” Tony instructs, and Bucky does, spreading his legs so that he can straddle Tony’s slim hips. Tony seems to see the effort it’s costing Bucky _not_ to rut into Tony, because he lifts one hand and spreads it over Bucky’s lower abdomen. Bucky feels himself throb at the touch only inches from his wanting cock, but he lets Tony adjust his position until he’s high enough that his cock couldn’t brush Tony’s if he tried. Bucky whimpers a little at the loss, even as he can feel a bead of precome forming on his tip.

“Tony, please,” he says. That’s all he can manage.

“Alright,” Tony replies soothingly. His hand tracks down Bucky’s side to rest gently on his thigh, an oddly comforting touch that makes Bucky’s head swim at the perfect contrast. Tony’s got him, and he’s not going to let go. “Bucky, you can touch me now.”

The relief of permission is so strong that Bucky’s balance wobbles a little when he lets go of Tony’s hip, but Tony’s hand on his thigh steadies him, and he’s able to get his fingers around Tony’s cock. He groans at the sensation of the hard, hot length in his hand, thick and so good to touch. Carefully, he tightens his fingers until they become what he hopes is comfortably snug but not too tight, and he starts to slide them up and down, up and down, watching the ripples of Tony’s muscles and the shortening of his breath with all the patient attention of a sniper. The urgency of Bucky’s own cock seems to fall away, like it’s not part of his own body anymore.

“You feel so good,” he murmurs helplessly. A string of precome slides down Tony’s shaft, and when it pools at Bucky’s thumb he freezes and begins to pant. He thinks he might be salivating. “Oh please, Tony, please,” he gasps.

“What’s that?” Tony asks, and Bucky can only look back at him with wide eyes, unable to articulate what he means, what he wants. For an agonizingly long moment Tony just watches him, head cocked to one side, hot blue eyes boring holes in Bucky. “You want to lick it off?” says Tony eventually, and Bucky nods with far too much enthusiasm. “From your hand only,” he decides.

But it’s still permission, and it still goes right to Bucky’s head with the thrill of being _allowed_ , so he pulls his hand reluctantly off of Tony’s cock and shoves his thumb into his mouth. He groans automatically at the rich, musky taste and his eyes flutter shut. It’s bitter on the back of his tongue as he swallows, and he keeps sucking, chasing every last bit of the flavor.

“Would you look at that,” Tony says wonderingly, and Bucky’s eyes fly back open. He flushes with embarrassment, realizing that he’s abandoned the handjob Tony tasked him with in order to fellate his own finger. For a moment, he’s anxiously awaiting Tony’s disapproval, staring firmly at Tony’s chin because he can’t meet his eyes. Then Tony gives a pleased sort of hum and relief floods through Bucky and he releases the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Dimly, he realizes that something has changed in his head, to put his pleasure on such a hairtrigger, to make him so very aware of every scrap of Tony’s approval. It’s almost like when the Winter Soldier takes over, the way the world falls away and leaves him with only the important details standing out like bright color on black and white. It’s different, though, because the Winter Soldier locks reality away behind a concrete wall that he can only break down when the fight is done; the wall Tony built is made of cotton balls, soft and gauzy and thick, but fragile enough that Bucky knows he could wade back out the other side any time he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to. He loves being down here, in this other mind that isn’t quite his, with nothing to worry about beyond Tony’s pleasure.

“You’d do anything I asked you to right now, wouldn’t you? You want to make me feel good that badly?” Tony asks. His voice is less focused, less intentional, than it was before, but it’s not lacking for command. He sounds blissed out, Bucky thinks, and it makes him shiver with desire.

“Yes, Tony,” he agrees. He might be slurring just a little.

“I bet you’d like to make me scream with it, wouldn’t you? Spit on your hand,” Tony instructs, and Bucky does. “Now get back to what you were doing, hard and fast this time. Twist your wrist—ah! Just like that, Bucky, just like that. Nope, no looking. Not this time. Lean up and kiss me.”

Bucky brings his mouth to Tony’s and swallows his groans of pleasure, but Tony hasn’t told him how to kiss, so he doesn’t. He just takes everything Tony gives and returns it, mimicking, licking where Tony licks, nipping in the same places he does. His hand is moving quickly, almost frantically, over Tony’s cock, and he pants at the feeling of more precome sliding out to join the mess of Bucky’s spit.

“Okay, alright, you’re doing great, beautiful,” Tony gasps, breaking their kiss. “Now suck on my nipples. They’re pretty sensitive, you know, and I’d love to get a fantastic mouth like yours on them.”

Bucky shudders to hear himself praised, and he feels a drop of something land on his hand where it’s stroking Tony. For a second, he wonders if Tony has come, but then he realizes that it’s _himself_ , he’s so aroused that his precome is dripping down onto his hand and Tony’s cock. He whines in the back of his throat even as his spine curls of its own accord, bringing his head down low enough that he can get his mouth on Tony’s nipples.

They’re hard and pink and oddly tantalizing, and they feel _delicious_ when Bucky obeys and starts to suck, first one, then the other. He feels frantic, panting with the pleasure. In the back of his mind, he registers that Tony’s hand has left his thigh and is trailing up his back, but he doesn’t fully understand until the hand sinks into Bucky’s hair and pins his head down, holding his mouth against Tony’s chest. He sucks and licks helplessly, and he has the wild thought that this is what it’s like to be weak, really and truly, to know that he couldn’t fight back even if he wanted to, because he’s already surrendered to Tony completely, his body, his hand, even his breath.

Tony _does_ scream when he comes, arching up hard, and the pleasure that sweeps through Bucky is so intense that he isn’t sure for several moments that he hasn’t come, too. There are tears gathering in his eyes and he thinks that Tony would barely have to touch him to bring him off. One finger might do it. One breath.

But Tony doesn’t touch him. For several moments, Tony doesn’t move except to shake and jerk his hips up into Bucky as he empties himself onto his own stomach and Bucky’s hand. The streaks of come over Tony’s belly look positively decadent, Bucky thinks, and his mouth waters as he watches the hot fluid trickle over smooth muscles, feels it cling to his fingers.

“Bucky?” Tony says eventually, in a muzzy voice like someone waking up from a dream. “Hey, honey, that was amazing,” he slurs.

A little bit of concern pricks at Bucky’s awareness, hearing Tony sound so out of it, but he pushes it down, assuming that Tony would tell him if something was wrong. Instead he pushes up against Tony’s hand in his hair like a cat, preening at the praise. He feels slow and happy, almost like he’s experiencing Tony’s afterglow, too.

“What do you want?” Tony asks him, propping himself up a little higher. “Do you want to come? I could touch you, or suck you maybe?”

Bucky doesn’t know. It’s like the questions ricochet off of his wall of cotton balls before he can actually sink his mind into them. Tony shouldn’t be asking, he should be taking, right? But Tony clearly wants an answer, so Bucky fights himself, trying to figure it out. Does he want to come? What would that even be like, with his mind like this? It doesn’t feel like it makes much of a difference to Bucky either way, but Tony wants him to figure it out. Tony wants an answer. It shouldn’t be hard, to say whether or not he wants to come.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Stop thinking,” Tony says sharply, and Bucky does. The obedience is abrupt and automatic and it makes something deep settle in Bucky’s mind, his distress fading into the background. All that matters is Tony. It only takes a minute of Tony’s gentle fingers in his hair to make him forget completely. “You did perfectly, Bucky, and now I’m going to reward you. Scoot up here so I can get my mouth on you.”

Bucky hesitates without meaning to. He understands that Tony means to give him oral sex, but when Bucky grew up, that was something almost unthinkably demeaning. He can’t imagine making Tony do that for him, even if he’s given to understand that attitudes are different now.

“Come up here, so I can get my mouth on you,” Tony repeats more firmly, and Bucky wavers. His knees shift forward without his consent, bringing his whole body with them. “Let’s be clear: I can do _anything_ that I want to you. Don’t tell me you’re going to let a little shame get in the way of your obedience.”

And Bucky is sold. It’s a relief to give in and do as he’s told, to move up until he’s straddling Tony’s chest and balancing himself with his hand on the ground behind Tony’s head.

At first, Tony just breathes on him, hot damp air washing over Bucky’s cock and putting Bucky’s earlier speculation to the test; it turns out he can’t come from a breath after all. He feels oddly disappointed. Then Tony’s mouth moves forward and takes him in, and Bucky wonders how he could ever have thought this was demeaning. Tony isn’t shamed by this, he glories in it. Here, curling around Tony’s mouth and desperately trying not to thrust because Tony hasn’t allowed it, Bucky feels more owned than he ever has in his life.

Bucky feels like Tony’s taking in all of him, not just his cock, like he’s surrounded and taken and held so close they’re not even separate people anymore. He has the presence of mind to bring his hand up to his mouth, and the flavor of Tony’s come bursts over his tongue, intense enough to make him shake. Tony has given him so much. He thinks he might be crying, and he doesn’t even know whether it’s from overstimulation or joy.

When he comes, it’s an afterthought, irrelevant except that Tony wants him to and sucks him hard to make it happen.

He collapses beside Tony and lets himself drift easily back up through the cotton haze, body still singing with pleasure and mind awash with more happiness than he can remember feeling in decades. All he wants is to kiss and cuddle and maybe confess his love, and then sleep for hours.

 

* * *

 

Tony swallows Bucky’s release with a cold kind of satisfaction, relieved that he was able to see this through to the end, and that his amateurish slip-up hadn’t thrown Bucky too far out of his headspace.

It had been beautiful, at the beginning; Bucky was so responsive to everything Tony did, every word and touch, that it was like Tony could do no wrong. He did what he thought Bucky wanted, he did what _he_ wanted, and Bucky responded well to all of it. For Tony, it was like sliding into an old groove only to find it deeper and sweeter than ever before. Anything he did just sent Bucky down further, and that was… God, Bucky was gorgeous in subspace. He was gorgeous all the time, but his _face_ , so content and trusting and _relaxed_ , like the world had just gone away for him…

Tony hadn’t been prepared for that kind of beauty. If he were a different man, he might’ve said that he felt drunk on Bucky’s submission.

But then he had to go and screw it all up. He should have known better than to ask Bucky so many questions, and open-ended questions at that. He was the dom, it was his job to make sure that his sub was safe and taken care of, not locked in choice paralysis and feeling guilty because of it. Bucky had relaxed out of it, or he had seemed to, but Tony had felt how weak that orgasm was. Only a few pulses, and not a lot of force. Clearly, Tony’s moment of stupidity had wrecked everything for Bucky, and not even Tony’s best blowjob could smooth that over.

Would Bucky ever want to sub for Tony again? Well, of course not, since his first time had gone so _very_ well. Tony wants to kick himself. But maybe Bucky would want to be with Tony in the normal way? Tony could find out, he could test the waters… suggest that maybe Bucky might like to do that again, only less complicated, to lower the risk of Tony screwing things up.

But what if Bucky doesn’t want to be with Tony at all anymore? Tony hadn’t just thrown Bucky out of headspace, he’d broken the agreement between them. _You give me the responsibility to take care of you_ , that’s what Tony had told Bucky, and then he hadn’t done it. He’d managed to take the control Bucky offered him just fine, though, and damn him for that all over again. Why couldn’t Tony just get it right for once, instead of ruining everything with his idiotic selfishness? He isn’t even someone worth being selfish over.

Dimly, Tony realizes that he is beginning to shake, with cold or with the adrenaline crash he isn’t sure, and that Bucky is still and calm at his side. He has no right to disturb Bucky after that, so he rolls to the side and curls in on himself, trying to stifle the tremors.

“Tony?” Bucky says with concern, and he rolls too, to get a better look at Tony. Tony squeezes his eyes shut in shame.

Of course Bucky is concerned. Tony had just broken the contact between them, contact that they needed to keep their ghosts at bay. He remembers, all of a sudden, the man on the horizon, standing there without accusing and without fighting, but always there to remind Bucky that his first kill was a choice, not an order from Hydra. Tony moves his arm back far enough that it brushes Bucky’s, just enough contact to clear away what dead remain for Bucky. He can do that much, at least.

“Tony,” Bucky says again, more firmly this time. “I need you to tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m fine,” Tony tries to snap, but he realizes his mistake immediately. His teeth are chattering, and the clicking is audible when he opens his mouth.

“Something’s going wrong in your head, isn’t it,” Bucky says, and it isn’t a question. Tony hears Bucky shifting around beside him, pulling Tony towards him until they’re more or less spooning. He still wants to hide, but he’s not going to fight Bucky on anything he wants right now, even if what Bucky wants is apparently cuddling and petting.

He curses himself for enjoying the contact as much as he does.

“That’s very _you_ ,” murmurs Bucky, exasperated and fond. “So concerned about _my_ head going somewhere bad that you forgot to tell me _yours_ could, too. What is it? I want to help, but I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Tony wants to insist that he’s fine, that he doesn’t need or deserve to be comforted, but then he thinks of the way Bucky is holding him, petting him almost absently. He wonders if this might be the kind of aftercare Bucky wants as he comes out of subspace, and then he hates himself for not thinking of it before. Tony doesn’t deserve to be comforted, but maybe Bucky needs to do the comforting anyway. Tony could accept that, for Bucky’s sake. He rolls over to face him.

“I’m sorry, I should have done this earlier,” Tony says, beginning to explain. He feels like he’s talking too fast, but he doesn’t know how to slow down. “Sometimes, after sex like that, all of the feelings and hormones in your brain can mess you up when you try to calm down, and you need aftercare to get back to a more normal headspace. It’s called drop, and it can happen to anybody, don’t worry. Whatever you want to get through it is fine.”

“Whatever _I_ want?” Bucky asks incredulously. He pulls his arm tighter around Tony’s back, pressing their bodies together. The heat of him is almost shockingly good along Tony’s front, sinking in all the way to his core.

“Sure,” Tony says. “Just tell me what you need, honey.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Bucky says. His tone falls on the exact midpoint between hysterical and agonized. “I’m going to take a wild guess that symptoms of drop can include shaking, overthinking things, misplaced guilt, and maybe some emotional swings?”

“It could,” Tony allows, but now he’s confused. Bucky doesn’t seem to be exhibiting any of _those_ symptoms. Is he hiding them?

“So how about you tell me what _you_ need, Tony? Let me help you,” Bucky says very earnestly. His eyes are grey-blue and huge from this close up, and the expression in them is both concerned and intense.

“Help me?” Tony repeats dumbly.

“It’s called drop, and it can happen to anybody,” Bucky says.

All at once, Tony flushes with shame, aware again of the way his whole body is trembling despite the heat of Bucky’s chest. _Is_ he dropping? Is that what this feeling is? A strange kind of relief rushes along his veins, filling him with a lukewarm tingling feeling that’s infinitely better than the cold. If he’s dropping, then maybe some of this fear, some of this certainty that he’s screwed things up with Bucky, might be unfounded. It might just be the drop making him think those things.

“So you’re… you’re okay?” Tony asks in a small voice. He needs to be sure.

“Just concerned about you, sweetheart,” Bucky answers, and Tony’s heart does a little flip in his chest.

“Even though I messed up?”

“When did you mess up?”

All the air leaves Tony’s chest in a rush. If Bucky doesn’t even remember Tony’s screw-up, it can’t have been nearly so bad as he was imagining. Maybe Bucky will still want to be with him after this, after all.

“At the end, when I kept asking you questions and I made you feel—“

“Confused,” Bucky interrupts. “Whatever you were going to say, I promise that all I felt was confused. That was…” He flushes prettily, and Tony can’t help but look. “That was the most intense it’s ever been for me, and I was confused because I felt like… like coming didn’t matter.”

“You didn’t want me to make you come,” Tony says, guilt seizing him.

“Did I say that? Shh, Tony, listen to what I’m actually saying,” Bucky says, but fondly. His fingers come up to tangle in Tony’s hair. “It was so intense, feeling you come, that I felt like it didn’t matter whether I did afterwards. I would have come, or not come, or done whatever you asked, just because you asked it. I’ve never felt like that before, and I didn’t know what to do, but it was _amazing_. Really.”

“Good,” Tony says, and he feels himself smiling. It’s an honest, real smile, the kind that feels almost unnatural on his face because it’s been so long since he’s had occasion to use it. It feels nice, though. He leans up to kiss Bucky, sighing as their lips meet and their tongues come out to play lazily.

“Good,” Bucky agrees, drawing back. Tony nestles himself under the tight grip of Bucky’s one arm and breathes him in until they fall asleep together.

 

*

 

When they wake, they find that their discarded clothes have reappeared, and they’re not half so sticky as Tony would have predicted. There is a strange look on Bucky’s face. He doesn’t seem upset or regretful or anything else that would indicate that he’s changed his mind about Tony, but he does look conflicted. Like he’s trying to make a decision, and he doesn’t know how to decide what to do. Tony wants to help, but after his embarrassing brush with topdrop, some part of him is still convinced that this thing between him and Bucky is fragile, too fragile to rock the boat. So he keeps his mouth shut.

Instead, he keeps half an eye on the silently-moving dead while they run, wondering if there are any others among them that he has even a prayer of resolving.

Some of them are easy, like Rumiko, who had been practically champing at the bit to scold Tony for blaming himself for her death. It had been so good to see her, for those precious few minutes when she was herself again. It feels like he’s loved her forever, and he knows he’ll never really stop.

But some of the dead are not so willing to leave. Happy, dead by Tony’s own metaphorical hand. Pepper had said that he would have wanted death, but Tony had known him almost as well as she had, and he isn’t so sure. Hundreds of innocents who came too close to Iron Man business and got hurt by people Tony should have stopped in time. And Steve, of course. The Steve that Tony knew for a decade as an Avenger wouldn’t have blamed Tony, he doesn’t think, but the Steve who fought Tony during the Civil War was a very different man. Harder. Uncompromising.

In any case, he had been the one to put power-dampening cuffs on Steve and send him to the steps of that courthouse. Surely the man who lays out the target for the shooter is more guilty than the shooter who was already there.

So Tony pushes that away and focuses on the things he _can_ do. It seems like there are few enough of those, here in the wasteland, but that just makes them more important. He needs to resolve as many dead as he can, so that he can actually stand a chance against his demon this time. Maybe he doesn’t need to do this for Bucky—maybe, miraculously, Bucky thinks he’s good enough already—but he still has to do it. For himself.

That’s good, he knows. Wanting to be better for himself. It feels like forever since he had the _time_ to make it to an AA meeting, what with taking care of SHIELD and everything, but it’s not like he’s forgotten all he learned.

 

*

 

After the day’s running, Bucky seems to have made his decision.

“Tony, I’m going to say something, and when I do, you have to promise not to freak out.”

“Is it going to be worth freaking out over?” Tony asks. A tinge of anxiety creeps into his mind, but he fights it back. They’re going to be okay, right? Bucky wouldn’t go to all those lengths to reassure him only to say that he didn’t want to be with him anymore, would he? He wouldn’t want to go back to being platonic after as much as saying that Tony had given him the best sex ever (about which Tony feels no small amount of smugness, looking back).

“No,” says Bucky, and he kisses Tony’s nose. It’s so adorable and _sweet_ that Tony’s heart gives helpless flip.

“Then why would I freak out?” he wonders.

“Because you’re going to assume that it means more than it does. It’s not a question that needs an answer, it’s just… a fact. That I want you to know. That it might be good for you to know,” Bucky says, and his expression is serious, but he’s not quite meeting Tony’s eyes anymore. It seems like a lot of buildup for whatever this statement is going to be; Tony considers for the first time that Bucky might be nervous.

“Just tell me,” he says. He moves his hand to Bucky’s waist and draws little circles with his thumb, hoping to relax Bucky.

“I love you,” Bucky Barnes tells Tony Stark.

It feels like hours before Tony finally gathers himself to respond, though it’s probably only minutes, at best several seconds. When he does open his mouth, the dumbest possible response spills out.

“Really? I mean, are you sure?”

“Yes, Tony, I’m sure,” Bucky says. There’s a smile in the corner of his lips, but tension in the corners of his eyes. He’s insecure, Tony realizes, and it’s his fault.

“I’m sorry, I should say it back, I should—“ he stammers, but Bucky cuts him off with a gentle finger over his lips.

“I told you, it’s a statement, not a question. I don’t need a response. And I _don’t_ want you to give me one if you don’t mean it,” Bucky insists. “I probably should have waited, your emotions have been on high for ages now… I just wanted you to know. I thought it might do you some good, just to know that you’re loved. Even if it’s _me_ , and I know I’m—“

“Practically perfect in every way?” Tony interrupts. “You should feel honored; it’s not just anyone who gets the Mary Poppins quote.”

“Mary who?”

“You heathen!” gasps Tony. But he’s deflecting, and he knows it. The truth is that it _does_ feel good to hear that someone loves him—it’s been so long since he even felt like anyone _liked_ him—especially when that someone is Bucky. The feelings Tony spent so long nursing for James seem to have grown up for Bucky, too. He knows that Bucky and James are different people, but with the way they behave, the calm focus and the wry humor and the banked exasperation colored over with gentleness… Sometimes, it feels more like Bucky and James are the same person with different memories.

And memory, as Tony knows too well, is touch and go for them, anyway.

“Tony?” Bucky says with concern. Tony returns from the back corners of his mind, where he stores the uncomfortable things like unrequited love. Maybe it’s time to get that feeling out of storage.

It might do Bucky good to know that he’s loved, too.

“Full disclosure,” he begins, “I might’ve been sleeping with James for the past few months.”

“James?”

“James Barnes, who only lets Steve call him Bucky. _Let_.” Tony shudders and pushes the grief away. This isn’t the time for it.

“Okay,” Bucky says slowly. His eyes are very wide, and he looks like he isn’t sure how to feel about this development. “So when you knew how to—how to take me out of my head, how to make me feel—“

“That was just you,” Tony assures him. “We were _casual_ ,” he explains, and tries not to sound bitter about it. He isn’t. Wasn’t. Not really. And it’s not like they were totally emotionally distant or anything. “We could never really get to that level of trust after I killed his oldest friend.”

“Hey,” Bucky says. His voice is sharp. “I don’t think you killed Steve, but we’ll get back to that later. If I did, if I really believed it was your fault, you couldn’t’ve _paid_ me to sleep with you once, let alone for months. I don’t think James would, either, if he blamed you.” Something softens in Bucky’s face, and his hand slides up to rub gentle circles over Tony’s heart. “Maybe he just didn’t know how to ask.”

It’s a nice theory, even if it’s not one that Tony will ever be able to test, and the smile Tony gives is a little watery. James had trusted Tony enough to help scrub his triggers, after all. They’re getting away from his point, though.

“I was sleeping with James,” he repeats, “and it was the most embarrassing thing ever. The sex was good—great, actually, that supersoldier thing definitely has a few perks—but he was so _cool_ about it, all detached secret-operative chill. Ice wouldn’t melt in his mouth.” And maybe Tony had hoped, just a little, that it meant more than that to James, that it meant something when James started calling him more often and with thinner and thinner excuses, but in the end, he’d never gotten a sign that it was real to James. Not any sign he could trust, anyway. It would be foolish to hope that James had been falling as hard as Tony had, and just hiding it better than he had been. “And there I was, trying to pretend I wasn’t pining over someone who had all the reason in the world to hate me. Someone who’s not so different from you.”

Bucky looks like he wants to correct Tony again, tell him that he can’t really be as hated as he thinks he was—more fool him, Tony’s pretty sure he could prove empirically that he was damn near the most hated person on the planet by the time he deleted his brain. But that feeling is behind Bucky’s eyes, warring with something else that looks like happiness, or maybe just shock. As Tony watches, his mouth drops open; he guesses that shock won that fight.

A moment later, happiness proves itself a dark horse. Bucky bursts into a wide, sunny smile that leaves Tony a little breathless. He reels Tony in and kisses him hard and thorough, pulling until Tony is right up against Bucky’s body, hot in every sense of the word.

“I love you, too,” Tony gasps, when he can suck in enough air between kisses. He thinks it ought to be said plainly.

Bucky’s mouth pulls into a smile without breaking the kiss.

 

*

 

It might just be Tony—Tony, so focused on the future that sometimes the past runs together—but it feels like no time at all before it’s like they’ve always been together. It’s not like they don’t still have issues, and major ones, but after everything they’ve done together, talking about them doesn’t feel like as much of an invasion as it might have before.

“You make me feel alive again,” Bucky tells him.

“You make me feel like I’m worthwhile again,” Tony confesses.

And it never feels like too much. It’s wild for Tony, to know that he can have such a profound effect on Bucky, but he doesn’t feel the need to hide the effect that Bucky has on _him_. They trust each other implicitly.

Plus, they can neck like teenagers whenever they want to. Which is often.

 

*

 

One day, Tony realizes that he was wrong so long ago, when he first ran from his demon.

The demon came from Tony himself, and he knew that; it was his mistakes, his failures, his own technology brought back on his own head. It’s fitting, of course, that Tony’s demon is himself; he’s always been his own worst enemy. He had been sure, when he first realized what the demon was, that he would never be able to defeat it for that very reason.

He’s never been able to defeat himself.

But that’s not quite true.

Ten years ago, when he’d lost his company and his friends and even Iron Man down the neck of a bottle, Tony hit rock bottom. One of many times, to be fair, but one of the hardest. He had been defeated in every way that mattered to him, and he still hadn’t been able to bring himself to give up the drink, even when it had him living on the streets, even when it nearly killed him in a snowstorm.

And then, even though it took a hell of a push, Tony had asked for help, and he’d gotten it. He fought back alcoholism for a decade, and he’s proud of that, but right now he’s thinking of the beginning, of that first victory when he overcame his pride and the twisted-up thoughts in his head and finally, finally, was able to ask for what he needed.

Right now, the only thing keeping him from hitting bottom all over again is Bucky. He lost his friends, his company, his suits, and even his sanity toward the end, and now he’s as good as dead.

He’s thinking it might be time for another victory.

“Bucky,” Tony says. There’s a feeling in the back of his throat that he shouldn’t say anything, that he could do this on his own, and he doesn’t even know where it’s coming from, but he swallows it back. He trusts Bucky more than he trusts himself. “I want to fight my demon.” The words spill out of him in a relieved rush. “Bucky, I need your help.”

And Bucky grins a wide proud grin that says _of course I’ll help_.

 

*

 

“No, no, no, shut up,” Bucky says, and Tony pulls up short in surprise. He’d been trying to explain about his dead, but— “I don’t wanna hear the specifics. It’s not important.”

“What do you mean, not important?” Tony says, a little indignant.

“I mean I don’t need to hear about this Mandarin guy’s magic rings, just like I didn’t need to hear about MODOK’s crazy scheme or Roxxon’s slimy business,” Bucky says, squeezing Tony’s shoulder bracingly. “Look, you blame yourself because you didn’t get there in time to save people, not because of the villain du jour’s plans.”

“I… okay,” Tony says. He feels terrifyingly exposed, all his feelings opened up for Bucky’s scrutiny, and it twists up his insides to hear Bucky saying everything so matter-of-factly.

“Listen. During the war, Steve liked to make plans that would take us and the Commandos across the German railroad lines,” Bucky begins.

“You were with the Howling Commandos?” Tony asks, “Not the Invaders?”

“Yes?” says Bucky, sounding confused. Well, that’s a weird difference between their universes. “Anyway, he liked to pass the railroads because sometimes, when we got lucky, we could stop the trains. There’d be supplies in them sometimes, but other times there’d be whole cars full of people. We’d let them out.” Tony never knew Steve had done that—Steve didn’t like talking about the war much, except for the friends he always missed so much—but it seems like exactly the kind of thing he would do. “Other times, though…” Bucky’s voice darkens, and his brow furrows. “We didn’t always get lucky. Too late, or too early, or just not in the right place at the right time. It happened.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony says.

“So, you know, it’s Steve’s fault most of those people probably died in concentration camps.”

“What?” Tony exclaims. It’s obvious from Bucky’s tone that he isn’t serious, but still, “ _What_?”

“Since Steve couldn’t stop all those trains, couldn’t punch Hitler in the jaw for real and take down all the Axis by himself, that makes it his fault, according to your logic,” Bucky explains. There’s a quirk to his eyebrow that invites Tony to share in the ridiculousness of that statement, but Tony just splutters for a moment.

“Of course it’s not his fault! He didn’t do any of it, it’s unreasonable to expect him to fix everything, nobody could’ve—“ Tony stops short when Bucky lays a finger across his lips.

“Do you hear yourself right now?” Bucky asks, and it sounds like a serious question this time.

“But it’s different when I—“

“Nope,” says Bucky. He moves his finger just enough to plant a dry, sweet kiss on Tony’s lips, and then he puts it back, keeping Tony quiet. “Baby,” he murmurs, “you’ve got a hell of a double standard going there.”

“I—“ Tony tries to say, and Bucky just shushes him yet again.

“You told me before that blame was about choice. Hydra’s kills aren’t mine because I never chose to make them. The same goes for you, sweetheart. You never chose to let those people get hurt. All those supervillains? Their actions are on them. They made the choices. And as brilliant as you are, it’s not up to you to stop every single one of them. That’d be an _unreasonable expectation_. Tony,” Bucky says lowly, warmly, “Please believe me when I tell you that it isn’t your fault.”

“I’ve made a lot of bad choices, though. Especially lately,” Tony says, but he feels like he’s fighting a losing battle. He’s still fighting back, but only on the strength of his emotional objection. Logic is on Bucky’s side.

“Please,” Bucky says, all but dismissively. “Ten to one you took the best choice out of a whole slate of bad options.”

“I sold my soul,” Tony whispers. He’s never confessed this to anyone before, not anyone living anyway, and it feels good to tell someone about this, about the pain of emptiness and indecision he felt through the whole damn Civil War. “Not literally, but I… I did a lot of bad things, things I hated, trying to get my friends to live through that damn war. And then Steve—“ His voice breaks. “I sold my soul and I didn’t even get what I paid for.”

There are a lot of answers to that. Tony can hear Steve’s voice in his head telling him that that’s what he gets for getting in bed with the father of lies in the first place. Bucky doesn’t say any of that, though.

“I know a little about that,” he says, and he pulls Tony in so that they can hold each other close. “I let the dark in a long time before they made me the Winter Soldier, because I needed it to keep Steve safe. Just a little more darkness, I kept thinking, and then he’ll be okay. It didn’t quite work out for me, either.”

“But _you_ aren’t the one who got him killed,” Tony says. He means to sound very logical, because he’s thought about this, he _has_ , but it comes out bitter.

“He went into the ice ‘cause he had a deathwish after I fell,” Bucky says, “but no, I didn’t get him killed. Neither did you.”

“You weren’t there,” Tony snipes.

“You said he was shot by his brainwashed girlfriend,” Bucky points out, and Tony shakes his head.

“On his way to trial, where he was only going because of me.”

“Tony, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing Steve trusted his girl,” Bucky says, looking at Tony searchingly. “I’m guessing the two of them spent a lot of time together. I’m _guessing_ that a lot of that time was spent alone.”

“Sure, they lived together for a while,” Tony answers. His brain is whirring double-time to try to work out where Bucky is going with this, but he’s coming up with nothing. Bucky may not be a genius, but it’s plain that he’s no slouch in the brains department. He doesn’t have the sheer calculating power that Tony does, but he’s good at thinking laterally, and at working things out based on minimal information. Heaven knows Tony’s been cagey about certain parts of his own history, but Bucky seems to have seen right through him all the same.

“So what you’re saying is that Steve’s brainwashed girlfriend could have shot him anytime she was ordered to, including places that were not the courthouse steps? Tell me, is there any reason she couldn’t have shot him while he slept?” Bucky asks. It’s a rhetorical question, but Tony’s brain turns it over all the same.

Bucky’s right.

He’s right, and maybe that might’ve occurred to Tony sooner if he hadn’t been so busy wallowing in self-hatred and guilt—

Bucky leans in and kisses the thoughts right out of Tony’s head. His lips and tongue and teeth are masterful, the skill of someone who’s kissed a thousand times but still treats every time as though it’s new and surprising and important. Tony’s done his fair share of kissing, too, but never quite like this. There have been few enough men, and none with this kind of skill, or this kind of strength to back it up. It’s new every time for Tony, too, feeling the breath stolen from his lungs and knowing that he can take Bucky’s air right back, that Bucky will _let_ him. He pins Bucky’s wrist and lets Bucky take him out of his head for a little while.

When they’re done, Tony feels more clearheaded than he has in ages.

He thinks, maybe, he’s ready to fight.

 

*

“This thing comes from me, it’s my demon,” Tony says, as he and Bucky wait for the approach of heavy mechanical steps. “That means it knows how to beat me. The thing is, I know how to beat it, too. Just like last time; go for the heart.”

“Your dream robot has a heart? Do you have a dream scarecrow with brains, too?” Bucky asks with a tilt of his head. Tony laughs, and it’s real, if nervous.

“It’ll have something like a heart anyway—it has to. I’ve always had a weak heart.” He says it matter-of-factly. Ten years ago, maybe, he would have been bitter about the subject, resentful of all the different ways he tried to patchwork his heart back together with metal plates and synthetics and surgery and science. Now, with time to get used to his vulnerability and with Extremis to show him what it’s like to have a steady heartbeat without the hum of electricity, he’s able to come out and say it without shame or anger.

“Only literally,” Bucky says, more soberly this time. “Tony, your heart ain’t got anything wrong with it. It’s beautiful, sweetheart.”

And it only takes one sentence to strip away everything until Tony’s left with no shields and no armor and no heart in his throat, but only because it’s already held so carefully in Bucky’s hand. He took it while Tony wasn’t looking, but Tony knows he’ll look after it well. It’s terrifying to trust someone that much, and he has to break the moment before the moment breaks him.

“You’re a giant sap, you know that?” he says, and then he kisses Bucky to take the sting out of it. He keeps kissing him for several more seconds, because kissing Bucky is great and he’d be happy doing nothing else for the rest of his time here in the wasteland.

Even if that’s forever.

Even if that thought scares him almost as much as this crazy degree of trust.

“Well, at least I can admit that I’m a sap,” Bucky returns. “I love you, Tony. You know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to—“

“Yes, I do,” Tony says firmly. He loves that Bucky wants to keep him safe, but he doesn’t even want to let himself consider taking the out, because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t do this now he might not do it at all. He might just spend the rest of his existence wrapped up in Bucky and trying to ignore the fact that they were always in danger from something Tony was too scared to face. Always running.

And that wasn’t any kind of life at all.

Not that either of them was, strictly speaking, alive.

Semantics.

“I love you,” Bucky says again, just a support this time, not an escape route.

“I love you too,” Tony answers, because God, does he ever. His protective instinct for Bucky is every bit as strong as Bucky’s for him. He wants to do this for himself—he keeps double-checking with his own mind, trying to make sure that his motivation is still what it should be, because on top of all the obvious reasons, this is a dream world and an impure motivation might actually make it more difficult to defeat his demon—but at the same time, he can’t help but think that it might be nice to live here with Bucky, alone, with only the monsters _inside_ their heads to bother them. They wouldn’t have to run.

Maybe, if they learned how, they could build something together. To a builder like Tony, very little is so tempting as permanence.

But the mechanical demon is getting closer, so Tony shoves his daydreams to the side. He needs all of his focus right here, right now, or the future will be a moot point for both of them.

 

*

 

The demon is approaching, lumbering steps from the horizon a slow torture while Tony and Bucky wait, and it’s just like when they were waiting for the Hydra except that it isn’t. It isn’t, because last time, Tony had been fully confident that Bucky would be able to take the monster out. This time, he’s terrified that his demon will take _Bucky_ out, and then Tony will be left alone in a bleak wasteland with Bucky gone, punished for Tony’s sins. He can’t bear the thought of other people hurting for him; he’s never been able to. He’d say that he’d rather die, except that he couldn’t bear to have Bucky tormented with that loneliness for him, either.

Tony has his left hand in Bucky’s and his right in a repulsor gauntlet when a wild thought takes hold of him.

He’s fought Galactus and Thanos and a dozen other universe-ending threats, so he can handle one measly robot, right? He can take out the demon’s heart or core or whatever it has that passes for one. He can do this without putting Bucky in danger.

He can do it alone.

And all at once it feels like he _has_ to, because what right does he have to risk Bucky’s life on top of his own? This is his problem, he should just get it over with, and he shouldn’t make Bucky deal with the tangled business of fighting and cleaning up Tony’s messes. It’ll be easier if Tony just does it himself.

Without even thinking, he forms up two jet boots. They take some focus, but not nearly so much as a full suit of armor had, and he manages it in a second. Bucky looks startled to find Tony several inches taller, but Tony can’t look at him, can’t risk losing his resolve. He lets go of Bucky’s hand and takes off, stabilizing with his one gauntlet.

“Tony, don’t—“ Bucky says, but Tony doesn’t let him finish.

“I love you,” Tony says again, just in case, and then he flies as fast as he can risk unarmored. He reaches the demon in seconds.

It’s larger than it had looked from far away, larger than he remembers it being. It’s easily two stories tall, maybe three, with huge weaponized arms that are pulled up at its sides, ready to fight. It waits to attack Tony for several seconds, tilting a single eye down to gauge the threat, and then in the space of a heartbeat it shudders into motion. Those arms are so much faster than they appear, and Tony has to dodge and weave and cut the jets to drop several feet in order to clear them. He’s breathing hard, but he’s good at this, he’s been flying for more than a decade now.

As he circles the robot, he strafes it with repulsor fire that leaves heavy scorch marks on the thick plate armor and trailing cables, but don’t pierce through them. Several hits—both impacts and repulsor beams—come inches from Tony’s body, and his heart starts to beat faster with real fear. He doesn’t have a whole armor on; any one of these hits could kill him if it actually struck home.

He can do this. He can do this alone. He can.

Tony recovers his altitude and banks around the robot, trying to stay beyond the reach of its arms but not so far away that it starts firing those repulsors again. With enough power, they can strip flesh from bone. There’s got to be a central nexus or core or _something_ he can aim at—

 _There_.

It’s not quite in the “chest” of the demon—a robot sketched from the loosest possible understanding of a living creature—but there is a place a little lower down, under layers upon layers of thick armor, where dozens of those heavy cables run together. Tony can’t see their meeting point, but it must be important, to have that many cables and that much armor in the same place. It can’t be a coincidence; he doesn’t design coincidences.

His flight stutters for a moment, and Tony glances concernedly at his jet boots, only to find the shade of Steve there, hanging onto the right boot. The metal is sparking under his ghostly fingers, and Tony loses a few more inches of altitude. He tries to shake Steve off, but he already knows it’s futile, so he just ignores it. He can still do this, and it doesn’t matter that his former best friend’s ghost is still trying to kill him, it doesn’t. If he says it enough times, Tony thinks, it might actually start to be true.

Tony swoops under the demon, twisting to go between its legs and confuse its location on him. His jet boot falters for a moment on the lowest point of the arc and he skins one elbow on the ground before he’s able to recover. There’s too much adrenaline to feel the pain yet, though. He holds himself steady in the air to aim, putting as much power as he can into the one gauntlet he made—and why shouldn’t a dreamed-up repulsor be as powerful as his unibeam? He takes a deep breath and—

The demon shoots him first, repulsor beam glancing right across Tony’s chest. The pain is so great that Tony loses focus on his jet boots and he falls out of the sky. He fires as he goes down, but there’s no way that shot makes it through the layers upon layers of armor.

When he lands, the impact is much softer than he would have expected.

“You idiot,” Bucky says as he puts Tony back on his feet. An arm swings straight for Tony and Bucky shoves him out of the way, taking the brunt of the impact himself. He goes flying, but not far, and Tony scrambles over to help him up.

“Are you okay? Bucky! Bucky, tell me you’re okay,” he demands, far too quickly.

“I’m fine, but I’m starting to wonder if you even hear me when I talk to you. I’m sure I told you that we’re doing this _together_ ,” Bucky says. He sounds angry, which… well, that’s kind of fair. Tony hunches a little with contrition. They had said they’d do this together. His burnt chest is aching; it must hurt a lot, to get through the adrenaline and endorphins.

“Alright, together,” he says, and turns toward the robot, which has turned in their direction and is starting to take lumbering steps again. He can see the scorch mark from his repulsor on his demon’s metal casing—it _had_ opened up the armor, not enough to get all the way through it, but enough to tear through several inches of plating. Not so useless after all.

“ _All_ of us together, Tony,” Bucky says pointedly, and Tony turns back to find Steve standing there, a malicious look on his face like he’s planning how next he’s going to get Tony killed.

And that… Steve might’ve changed in the Civil War, but that angry, scheming ghost could never be Steve.

All at once, it’s almost easy to say it.

“I didn’t kill you, Steve.” Part of Tony believes it, even though part of him still hates himself for even being _connected_ to the situation regardless of culpability. It seems like that part is enough. He forgives himself. It feels weird.

The vicious look fades from Steve’s face and his spine straightens, becoming again the upright, noble man Tony had always known him to be. His jaw clenches as he looks at the oncoming demon, and he speaks in a voice that is his own, steady, and empty of accusation.

“For you,” Steve says, embracing Bucky, “and you, my friend.” He pulls Tony close and hugs him for long moments, shielding him from the robot’s repulsor fire with his own insubstantial body. It’s been such a long time since Steve called him anything but _Stark_ that Tony feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

Absently, he notices that his chest hurts a lot less now.

“Let’s go,” he says.

Steve and Bucky charge forward first, and it’s a thing of beauty to watch the two of them working together. They’re from different universes and one of them is dead, but the two of them have always been on the same wavelength and it only takes them a moment to hit their stride together. They each take one of the robot’s arms, dodging and rolling around them and then, as though they had choreographed it, scrambling _up_ those waving arms as one.

Tony makes new jet boots as he understands what they’re doing. Each of them takes hold of the cabling along the robot’s arms and yanks it back while they brace against each other on the metal struts of the robot’s back—they’re pinning the arms to give Tony an opening.

Even supersoldiers can’t hold that forever; Tony has to go _now_.

He flies up, charges his repulsor like before until it has the power of his unibeam, and this time his aim is true. It jars his arm, but the blast goes right through the opening he had made before and rips the robot open, tearing apart steel reinforcements and vital wiring and cables like tissue paper. The light goes out of the robot’s single eye, drained of power.

He did it. _They_ did it. Together.

Tony swoops around to bring Bucky gently to the ground before the robot inevitably falls on him, and then he instinctively goes to help Steve, only just remembering that Steve is not, in fact, either actually present or in danger. Steve grabs his hand when he gets close, though, and pulls him in far enough to press a dry little kiss to Tony’s forehead, like a benediction.

“Nice work, Avenger,” he says, and then he’s gone.

The exhaustion catches up with Tony all at once, the effort of solidifying beam weapons and firing them repeatedly, not to mention flying, on top of what he thinks must be a lot of emotional exertion. He crashes quite literally, losing focus on his jet boots again, but the fall isn’t very far this time, and this time when Bucky catches him he pulls him right into a kiss that feels a lot like a reward. Like Bucky is proud of him.

That idea warms Tony right through, just as much as the heat of Bucky’s touch does. A rush of joy races through Tony, a bone-deep feeling of happiness that fills him up to bursting until he can’t help but kiss back with all the enthusiasm he has in him. He finds a second wind in the sweetness of Bucky’s breath sighed into his mouth.

They have to scramble back out of the way of the robot as it finally crashes to the ground, but as the dust cloud settles Tony laughs with relief. There’s nothing to run from anymore. Nothing to fear. There are still tangled thoughts and guilt and self-hatred lurking in his brain, but none of them can reach him out here anymore. None of them will be chasing him down to shoot him with repulsors. The Hydra is dead and the robot is dead too, quickly falling into disrepair and leaking coolant and oil everywhere.

It’s hard for Tony to like himself—it always has been—but he’s starting to think that Bucky was right. Winning that battle starts by knowing that his enemy is wrong about him, and by knowing the truth about himself. It’s a lot easier to see that truth without the shadow of his demon blocking it out. Silently, he promises to be fairer to himself.

He and Bucky are smiling as they run this time, not to get to safety, but to get to a place where they can look wide around in every direction and see nothing but each other.

 

* * *

 

Running is different now.

Lately it feels like every time Bucky starts running something is different about it; first he had to compensate for the lack of weight on his left side, then he found himself suddenly faster when the dead stopped holding him back, and then he felt that strange, bubbling happiness of being useful in the pit of his stomach when he ran holding Tony. Now, running is different because it’s just running.

It’s not a retreat. It’s not flight from something that wants to kill him and Tony. It’s just running.

It’s been a long time since Bucky was running _towards_ something he wanted, and not away from something that was dangerous. It feels good. It feels safe. More than anything, it feels like it always does with Tony: like it’s brimming with the potential of a thousand good things Bucky could never have thought of on his own. Awe and love sweep through Bucky, and he can’t help but smile at Tony running beside him. It feels natural to smile, almost normal.

It makes Bucky feel a rush of pride for _himself_ and how far he’s come, which is unfamiliar and strange but not unpleasant.

And he’s proud of Tony, too, Tony who just overcame everything he had been so terrified of, Tony who finally accepted help, Tony who resolved so many of his ghosts when he had once been on the brink of succumbing to them.

Bucky looks around the wasteland, barren and empty but somehow still so full of good things he and Tony have built and found together, and for the first time he lets himself miss his own world, miss Steve. It hurts, but it feels like a good kind of hurt. He still doubts he’ll be woken up, but that’s okay. He’s happy here with Tony. He thinks Tony is happy here with him.

They stop running. Not because they’ve calculated that they’ll be safe, but because it seems like a good place. As good as any other, really; the advantage is that the decomposing skeleton of Tony’s monstrous machine isn’t visible.

“I’ve been thinking,” Tony says wryly, “that the landscape is a little bleak.”

“Is that so?” Bucky says, playing along. Tony has an excited gleam in his eye like the first time he had dreamed up repulsors, and there’s a low thrill in Bucky’s gut wondering what he’ll come up with next.

“It’s very difficult to will things into existence; I couldn’t do a whole armor, and you had some trouble making guns function,” Tony begins. He has on his matter-of-fact explaining voice, which Bucky really shouldn’t find as attractive as he does. “But I was wondering what we could build if we _didn’t_ will the materials into existence. If we used what was already available.”

“But there’s nothing—“ Bucky says, but halfway through his sentence it clicks and he trails off. “Well, we gotta be standing on something. You want to, what, make a house?”

“You can dream a little bigger than that, darling,” Tony says, and Bucky does. He thinks of a tower in New York, thinks of Steve telling people it’s a big ugly building and then filling sketchbooks with it all the same, so he can’t mind the lines of it _too_ much. He thinks of a tower in New York where Tony invited all the Avengers to live with him, thinks of the loneliness that describes, and for a moment he feels the same caretaking sort of love for his own universe’s Tony that he does for this blue-eyed one in the wasteland.

For a moment, he feels homesick.

“Well, I’m a city boy, that’s for sure,” is what Bucky says out loud. “Let’s get started.”

 

*

 

Tony begins with a complex little wireframe ball that somehow still holds itself together despite being made of earth, and then he tells Bucky to do his best to distract him, to see if the construction holds when he doesn’t concentrate on it. So Bucky tackles Tony to the ground and wraps his legs around Tony’s hips, and really, Tony should have seen that coming. It only takes him a second to recover and roll his hips back against Bucky, though, and then they’re rocking together and kissing like breathing. By the time they come, neither of them is thinking about the experiment any longer.

A minute later, Tony leans up and reaches for something on the ground a few feet away from Bucky’s head—putting one of his nipples very close to Bucky’s mouth and nearly dragging them into round two in the process—and then he returns with the complicated ball, still intact.

“Hey, proof of concept!” Tony says delightedly, and his smile is so gorgeous that Bucky decides he ought to reward successful scientific endeavors with sex.

They don’t actually remember to build for a long time.

 

*

 

There’s a scar on Tony’s chest, a repulsor burn that must have hurt like dying except that it healed in a blink when he finally, finally forgave himself, just like the wound on Bucky’s leg had. It’s right over Tony’s heart, and Bucky kisses it sometimes, thoughtlessly, because it’s beautiful to him and he’s proud, _so damn proud_ of his lover.

Bucky has found that one of this favorite things to do, the thing that makes him feel the most useful, the most _submissive_ , is to worship Tony’s body. He adores covering Tony in gentle touches and wet kisses everywhere Tony likes best to be touched, and it doesn’t take much convincing for Tony to let Bucky slide over those few inches from Tony’s nipple to Tony’s scar. Oh, that’s not to say that Tony _likes_ it, not at first, but he lets Bucky do it gamely enough. Tony’s body before had been perfect, almost too perfect—a side effect of his modified Extremis virus, Tony had explained once—and he seems ashamed at first to have lost that perfection.

It doesn’t matter to Bucky, though. _Tony survived that_ , the scar says, and Bucky loves to see the evidence of his strength. Bucky explains his position with his tongue, and in the end it doesn’t take too long to win Tony over to his point of view.

 

*

 

When they start building, Bucky is afraid at first that he won’t be much help at all. He knows next to nothing about architecture, and he hadn’t been able to keep all the working parts of a gun solid enough simultaneously to fire, let alone a solid structure. It’s not that he feels like it’ll turn out any worse if he lets Tony do all the work; in fact, he thinks it might turn out _better_ , then. It’s that he likes feeling like he’s doing something useful for Tony, and more than that, he’s always loved doing good things for the people he cares about. Whether that was feeding Steve or braiding his sister’s hair or making sure the scrubbing got done in the kitchen so that his Ma wouldn’t have to, or, now, looking after Tony and doing whatever he can to help him.

It’s a relief to learn that building in the wasteland is nothing at all like building in the real world.

They just imagine what they want and the earth that might be red or white flows upward, looking like a sand castle building itself, except that once the pieces are in place they don’t have to keep looking like sand. It takes some concentration, but eventually Tony and Bucky make the foundations of the tower look like actual foundations, like concrete and steel.

After that it’s easy to keep adding floors and staircases and still more floors. Most of the lower ones remain unfinished—they don’t intend to stay there—but when they get higher up, they start to flesh them out with doors, rooms, and furniture.

Eventually, they decide to stop going up and they make the top floor into a penthouse, spacious and beautiful but not so large that it can’t still feel cozy. The couch is wide and squishy, the chairs are comfortable, and the bed is so large that Bucky worries it first that it won’t fit in the bedroom, but Tony assures him he’ll appreciate it later.

They build for what might be hours or minutes, the task so engrossing that time falls away.

The one thing they can’t do is make glass. Bucky tries, and then abandons the project and watches Tony try, but neither of them can seem to make the earth, normally so good for construction, into something transparent. It’s no matter, though. There’s no wind to keep out, no watching eyes to block with reflective coatings, and they’ve found that it’s cold everywhere in the wasteland except with each other, so it’s useless to try to insulate. In the end, they just leave one wall wide open with a railing, giving them an expansive view that would be lovely if it looked out on any scenery.

“How ‘bout a skyline?” Bucky asks, leaning on the railing beside Tony.

“You read my mind, honey,” Tony answers, and then his lips quirk up. “Tomorrow?”

“What, you got some plans for tonight?” Bucky says very innocently. The hot gleam in Tony’s blue eyes makes it clear that he doesn’t believe the act for a second.

“Oh, a couple,” he drawls.

They’re tired, so the christening of the bed is more slow and sweet than Bucky thinks either of them intended, but it’s perfect all the same. Bucky hasn’t exactly done a lot of lovemaking, but these gentle touches, this hot breath gasped out of each other’s mouths and breathed right back with tender words, these hands held tight as their bodies move with less than an inch of space between them—

This must be what it’s like when you love each other so much that the sex is just a symptom and the movements of your bodies are just another language in which to speak devotion.

Afterward, when they lie together in the quiet space between afterglow and sleep, Bucky recognizes the look on Tony’s face. He’s looking at Bucky with enough intensity to set a hearth to roaring, enough gentleness to break a heart. He looks more like himself than ever, like everything Bucky loves about him.

Bucky imagines he looks about the same.

 

*

 

The other buildings in their skyline don’t take nearly so much effort as the first Stark Tower—they don’t intend to live in the others, after all. They start simple.

Bucky adds buildings he remembers going up when he was a kid, like the Empire State Building everybody always argued about until it was done and not going anywhere, and the Chrysler Building Steve always liked so much. There are a few others whose names he never learned, or maybe forgot when Hydra had him, and he adds them too, just because he likes how they look. He doesn’t think any of the buildings he dreams up are quite the same as their real-world counterparts, but he likes them all the same, and Tony always tells him that they’re perfect.

Tony builds mostly newer buildings, impressive feats of engineering that Bucky doesn’t ever remember seeing before—not that that means they _weren’t_ there when he lived in New York, mind. Now, the only time they run is when Tony wants to get far enough away from their Stark Tower that they’ll have a proper view of whatever skyscraper he wants to raise that day.

Slowly but surely, their view gets better.

One night, Tony finally has the patience to dream up lube, and a whole host of new options open up. The first time they put it to use, Tony takes Bucky over the railing, staring out at the city they’re building together. He’s struck by the beauty of it, of how much they’ve done already, and by the wide gaps in the spaces between the buildings.

There’s so much left that they can do. They’ll never really be done.

It’s a little sappy, but afterwards Bucky is sure he came thinking of designing new buildings together, once they’ve exhausted their memory of ones they knew before.

The bed is probably the most comfortable place for sex, but Bucky can’t deny that he likes doing it out in their living space, too, on the couch or over the counter or leaning on the railing, like the first time. There’s something brave in the feeling of fucking Tony in a place that’s open to the world. He can’t remember it very well himself, but he thinks it must be because of his youth, growing up in a time when he and Tony would have had to keep this a desperate, shameful secret.

There are some memories he doesn’t want back, even if they come from the time when he and Steve were as close as brothers. Even if he remembers who he’s killed more clearly than who he’s kissed.

But Bucky doesn’t let himself dwell on painful memories, or missing memories that would be painful if he got them back. Instead he pours all his focus into right now, this moment where he and Tony are together and in love and free. They keep building, and every day their view gets a little better.

 

*

 

One day, Bucky and Tony go their separate ways to explore the city for a little while, with a promise to meet back home, and that’s when Bucky discovers that the city isn’t empty.

There are no more Hydra victims with accusing eyes following him around—there haven’t been since he defeated the Hydra itself—but there are a few men, visible out of the corners of Bucky’s eyes or when he peeks carefully around buildings. They’re soldiers.

Some of them are probably bigoted Nazi scum, and some of them probably aren’t. He guesses that they’re faint because his feelings of guilt for them are faint. It was war, which isn’t an excuse, but it does mean that the one thing he doesn’t doubt is that they would have killed him or his men if he hadn’t done what he’d done. Knowing that he saved people he cared about by killing those soldiers makes it hard for Bucky to muster a full-blooded feeling of guilt for doing it, no matter what that makes him.

He does, however, spend the better part of the day making them an apartment building. On the outside, it looks like the one he and Steve lived in, but on the inside it’s much more spacious and comfortable. He writes all the building’s signs in German.

When Bucky leaves, he turns back and sees one of them looking at him from a window, and he feels something inside him settle.

 

*

 

After a few more similar days, Bucky learns that Tony has been building townhouses, because not all his dead are gone, either. His aren’t soldiers, though; they’re civilians who were harmed by the misuse of Tony’s genius.

The houses he builds them are large and beautiful and they have enough bedrooms for whole families, though very few of them are occupied by actual families. Most of the dead still don’t speak, and Bucky thinks maybe they flicker more than they used to, but they still seem grateful for Tony’s efforts. That says more about Tony’s own mindset, and it makes Bucky happy to see that Tony is at least trying to give himself the benefit of the doubt.

That night, they just sleep together, holding each other in bed and drawing up Tony’s best attempt at silk sheets until finally, finally, they both feel completely warm.

 

*

 

Just once, Tony asks about his arm.

“Now that we have something more permanent to build with…” Tony begins, tentatively, “I was wondering if you wanted to try, or wanted me to try, we could replace your metal arm—“

“No,” Bucky says immediately, but it comes out more snappish than he intends, so he gentles it with a kiss to Tony’s cheek. “I’m… I’m not ready for that yet. You have to understand, it was Hydra’s, and it was always controlling and hurting and—“

“I understand,” Tony says softly, and Bucky looks at him, really looks. Tony doesn’t have on that pitying expression that so many people had, between getting his arm shot off in Siberia and going into the ice in Wakanda. No, Tony just looks concerned and generous, like he’s aching to do something good for Bucky but like he really does understand, and he’s not going to do anything until and unless Bucky says it’s okay.

And Bucky really thinks about that, thinks about having an arm on that _Tony_ made for him, something that would be beautiful and functional and made for gentleness instead of violence. It’s a good thought.

“Maybe sometime,” Bucky concedes, smoothing the furrow between Tony’s brows. “For now, though…” he begins, coming in closer to Tony and looking up at him with heavy-lidded eyes and a slow smirk. The shift in the mood is a palpable thing, hot and slow like syrup as they feel the wanting tension in each other’s bodies. “It’s twice as easy for you to hold me down.”

“Like that, do you, Buck?” Tony says wolfishly, already wrapping strong, callused fingers around Bucky’s wrist and backing him towards the bed. A shiver goes down Bucky’s spine, hearing his old nickname in Tony’s mouth.

“Oh yeah.”

 

*

 

They don’t run out of New York buildings, but they do start adding other ones, anyway. Bucky starts it by accident, forming up a building that he’s sure he saw _somewhere_ even if he’s not positive where.

“You know they call that building the Cheesegrater, right?” Tony says, looking up at what Bucky’s working on. “And it’s in London.”

“Oh,” Bucky says dumbly, flushing a little.

“No worries, the _New York only_ rule was an unofficial rule, and one I’m happy to break,” Tony says, smiling. As if to prove the point, Tony immediately builds a round, pointed building that he insists is known as the Gherkin. Bucky is sure that both of their creations have real names that are much more dignified than Cheesegrater and Gherkin, but Tony declines to mention them in favor of appreciating the English sense of humor.

After that, their city gets kind of crazy. There are a few more London buildings, and some from Chicago, and several from Tokyo that Tony seems particularly fond of. The Eiffel Tower is a joint decision that looks almost adorably small next to many of the high-rises around it. Before long, Bucky’s sure that they could irritate people from all over the world with their mismatched patchwork city, but the truth is that he doesn’t care.

He can look out over his railing and see things he thinks are beautiful, that Tony thinks are beautiful, things that they laughed about and worked on together and worked on separately to surprise each other. No matter how surely he knows that none of this is real except Tony, it still feels like a home.

 

*

 

“I’ve been thinking,” Bucky says one day, while they’re lying in bed, “about guilt. And responsibility. And… and about purpose.”

“Oh?” Tony replies. It’s a small sound, little more than a _go on, I’m listening_ , but Bucky can feel the rumble of it in Tony’s chest where his head is lying, and it feels nice, and close. He tightens his arm around Tony’s waist and adjusts the position of his left shoulder under him.

“And I know a lotta y— _our_ guilt was unfair. It was good to let that go. But the ones who’re left… I’m thinking we just let ‘em be, and make peace,” Bucky says slowly. He doesn’t want to push Tony, but he really _has_ been thinking about this, and he thinks maybe this might be good for Tony to hear. “’Cause sometimes guilt _is_ fair, and when it is, I’m thinking that feeling has a purpose. That’s why you’re a superhero and I’m… I’d been daydreaming of having a go at that, too, before… well, I toldja what happened with my triggers.”

“You mean that guilt tells you when you ought to take responsibility,” Tony says succinctly, and Bucky nods against his chest. “You’re probably right. I suppose not everyone can be in the hero game for reasons so noble as Steve’s.”

“Steve’s?” Bucky picks his head up and tries not to look _too_ amused as he meets Tony’s eyes. “Kid’s a punk with a thousand and one things he thinks he’s gotta prove to the world. Sure he wants to help people, always has done, but he does it to _prove_ he can now when he couldn’t before, not just ‘cause it’s right.”

“It _is_ right,” Tony says defensively, and Bucky bites back his smile, knowing it won’t make Tony anything but frustrated. For all he’s a genius, Bucky realizes that Tony has this tendency to miss the point kind of a lot.

“Sure it is. ‘S right when you do it too. We’re talking the whys though, aren’t we?” Bucky points out.

“I suppose,” Tony says, almost sheepish, the offense leaking out of his posture. Sometimes Bucky forgets that Tony used to be Steve’s best friend, too.

“So what’s less noble about us atoning for our pasts than him trying to make up for his?” he asks.

Tony considers this for a long time. He looks like he wants to reply off-the-cuff, _it just is_ , because it’s them and Bucky guesses that tendency to put themselves a rung below Steve on the morality ladder might be yet another thing that they share. He never realized it before, back in his own universe, but Bucky and Tony seem to have a lot of things in common. He wonders if they might have become friends, or more, under different circumstances, and then he lays his head back down on his blue-eyed Tony’s chest to hide the melancholy that sweeps through him.

Tony back home has got to be feeling pretty alone right now, in that empty tower of his. The worst part is that even if Bucky were back there, in his own universe—even if he _could_ get back—there would be nothing he could do, because Tony, justifiably, wouldn’t want to see him. Not after that footage. Not after he and Steve beat him into the ground.

“Nothing, I guess,” Tony says eventually. “Logically. But it still feels like—“

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky says.

And they lie there together, holding each other tight, until finally they manage to sleep.

The next day, they build a hospital for their city.

 

* * *

 

Tony wakes up one morning, and he feels okay.

It feels like it should be less momentous than it is, what with the days upon days he’s woken up beside Bucky, and the sheer degree to which he _adores_ finding himself held by that strong arm, against that sturdy body. It feels like it should have happened sooner, maybe.

Then again, maybe it shouldn’t—before, they were always under the stress of having to run from something or other, or finding themselves surrounded by ghosts.

Today, though, he just feels content.

It’s not even weird thinking about it as _morning_ , even though there’s no increase in light and no birdsong or traffic or anything else that’s supposed to indicate a morning. Tony finds that he’s used to this, now. And not in a bad way at all—rather, he feels like this is normal, like he could continue to wake up this way for the rest of his life. He doesn’t let himself wonder how long his and Bucky’s souls will continue to inhabit this strange dreamworld before they pass on or die or whatever it is souls do. Instead, he just basks in that feeling of contentment, and waits for Bucky to wake up.

After a minute of waiting, though, he decides that he’s not going to wait any longer. In the real world, he’d never wake Bucky, because his nightmares and his reflexes are _dangerous_ , but this isn’t the real world.

So Tony gently rolls Bucky off of him and onto his back, and then he climbs on to straddle Bucky’s waist. By the time he’s settled on, Bucky’s grey-blue eyes are open wide and the pupils are already starting to dilate with anticipatory arousal, and Tony smirks just a little. It takes all of four seconds for Bucky to go slack completely under Tony, a clear message saying that he’s ready for whatever Tony wants to do, that he’ll do what he’s told. His submission goes straight to Tony’s head like it always does, makes him feel light and floaty and powerful all at once. Even in the suit, he’s never felt quite so much like he can do _anything_ as when he’s like this. Tony just has to kiss Bucky for that, so he does, leans down and takes and takes and takes until he’s the one out of breath and Bucky’s mouth is swollen and slick in the sweetest way.

Tony wraps his fingers around Bucky’s wrist and holds it tight, and he feels himself hardening at the shudder that goes through Bucky’s body. He’s never had anyone who was so responsive to such simple bondage before, but Bucky actually _prefers_ it that way. If Tony waits, he knows, he can even get Bucky to beg for that feeling of being restrained and held fast by Tony’s hands. He doesn’t want to wait, though. He’s feeling impatient this morning.

“I know you want something. You get to have my cock all the time, huh, honey?” Tony asks, his voice already dropped into a smooth, low register. Bucky nods, his eyes brightening a little. His cock, already half-hard, twitches where it’s pressed against Tony’s thigh. That’s lovely, to know that Bucky wants him even at a moment’s notice, but that’s not what Bucky’s going to get. “How about me, though? Can I have _your_ cock, baby?”

Bucky’s eyes widen and his mouth opens in surprise—Tony hasn’t outright told Bucky about Ty, but he _has_ implied that someone treated him poorly in the past, and it’s not like Bucky’s stupid—but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just nods in a contained kind of way, like he would be eagerly excited to get his cock in Tony if he weren’t so concerned about him. In retrospect, Tony probably should have expected that; Bucky’s instinct for caretaking is a mile wide and nothing, not even the deepest subspace, seems able to shut it off. Well, Tony can allay his concern.

“That’s what I want this time, honey, so you just lie still and let me take it, okay?” This comes out sweeter than Tony intended it, but the furrow in Bucky’s brow relaxes and he slumps into Tony’s grip, so he figures it’s okay.

And as little patience as he has this morning—Bucky’s a wonderfully big boy and it’s been _such_ a long time since Tony let himself ride anyone as hard and fast as he’s planning to ride Bucky—Tony makes himself wait. Part of it is to wind Bucky up, but the other part is that, well, Bucky _is_ a big boy, and it _has_ been a long time since Tony’s done it this way. He likes it a little rough, but he doesn’t actively want to hurt himself. So Tony climbs off, smirking at the affected disappointment on Bucky’s face. Even if it’s not all real, the thought makes Tony hot as hell. Slowly, teasingly, he strips Bucky’s clothes off and then his own, standing by the foot of the bed.

Once he’s naked, Tony leans forward and wraps one hand around Bucky’s ankle. Bucky’s breath gets visibly shallower at the promise in the touch. Tony concentrates for a moment, and restraints form up around both of Bucky’s ankles, anchoring them in place on the bed with gentle but inexorable force. The look on Bucky’s face is real disappointment this time—the soft, warm cuffs are as close to mimicking a human grip as Tony can manage, but they’re _just not the same_ , Bucky always says. He’d have nothing but Tony holding him down all the time if it were possible, but Tony only has so many hands, and the cuffs are a good enough substitute to hold Bucky’s legs, at least.

And it’s not like Bucky _dislikes_ this kind of bondage, either. Bucky’s cock looks so hard it must be aching. His wrist is still flat against the sheets beside his head, like he’s forgotten he can move it, or rather like he _can’t_ move it, because the last time Tony touched it was to hold it in place. When Bucky starts to go under, Tony’s will is as good as any restraint, a notion that sings up Tony’s spine and makes him briefly dizzy.

Still slowly, Tony crawls up Bucky’s body, looking hungrily down at the hard muscles and rough battle-marks, and letting Bucky see his want. Bucky is proud of his scars, and he likes to see that Tony likes them too. Everything about Bucky’s body screams power, and the fact that he’s _letting_ Tony do this…

Not just letting, _loving_. Black has overtaken blue in Bucky’s eyes, and his expression is already going soft and gentle with submission: desperate, but accepting. He _wants_ , but he’ll take whatever Tony gives him. It’s a gorgeous combination.

Tony’s whole body feels too hot, his skin too tight.

With his left hand, Tony stretches up to hold Bucky’s wrist in place, and with his right, he reaches behind himself, dreaming up lube as he goes. It’s been a while, but he remembers how to open himself up, and he knows from experience how a good tease can make Bucky crazy for it. Tony already knows he won’t last long, but he’s thinking if he tries hard enough, he’ll be able to knock that supersoldier stamina down a peg or two. He slides the first finger in slowly, not letting himself rush, twisting it and pushing it in _deep_ before pulling out until only the fingertip is still inside him. Bucky’s moan is audible when Tony pulls himself open, showing off the tiniest glimpse of the inside of his hole.

“You like watching, Buck?” Tony asks, wanting to make Bucky say it. He already knows the answer; even if he didn’t, the answer is hard as steel and twitching against Tony’s thigh with every slick sound, every teasing motion Tony pushes inside himself. Just to be a little cruel, Tony lets his thigh rub harder against Bucky’s cock, enough pressure and friction to be good but not enough.

“Yeah, yes,” Bucky murmurs distractedly. His brain and his mouth are almost totally disconnected right now, and his eyes are fixed between Tony’s legs. Tony watches the pink flash of Bucky’s tongue as it slides unconsciously over his lower lip.

“You wanna get inside me?” Tony purrs. If he keeps pushing, eventually he’ll tease a whole sentence out of Bucky, but he wants to break down that wall completely. He wants Bucky helpless, tongue spilling all his half-formed thoughts so that he can’t hide anything from Tony.

“Yeah.”

“Mm? Tell me more, honey. What do you wanna do?” Tony’s up to two fingers now, and it’s stinging just a little, making his pulse erratic. He keeps pushing, scissoring his fingers and showing off for Bucky.

“I wanna get inside you,” Bucky says, breathy and almost inaudible.

“Why’s that, love?” Tony gasps. His voice breaks when he brushes accidentally over his prostate, and again when he shoves his fingers into it on purpose, but he’s so _close_ to getting Bucky talking he can nearly taste it. " _Tell me_."

“It’s so good when you do it to me, and I want… I want you to feel it too, Tony,” Bucky says, impassioned and begging. “You just… you always make it so good, every time, and I can’t even move and I know you’ll make it perfect, and maybe I won’t even, won’t even… oh Tony…” sighs Bucky, his head lolling to the side for a moment as his eyes flutter shut. “Oh, Tony,” he repeats, and when he opens his eyes Tony can’t help but stop dead to stare at him because he’s easily the most beautiful thing Tony’s ever seen. His sharp, icy eyes are hazy through thick lashes, and his lips are bitten-red and swollen. A flush is rising under his pale skin and traveling down his throat to his delicate collarbones and the strong tendons of his neck that Tony loves so much to mark up. Long strands of dark hair stick to his sweaty forehead, making him look half wild.

And if that weren’t enough, this lovely creature is lying under Tony in Tony’s own bed, sighing his name and trusting him to touch him exactly like he needs.

Tony thinks he’ll never need anything but this, ever again.

“Your hand,” Bucky murmurs after a moment, and Tony abruptly realizes that he’s accomplished his earlier goal. These are Bucky’s thoughts, unfiltered and unprompted, and he listens eagerly even as he finishes getting himself slick and ready. “It feels so, so hot it’s like fire,” continues Bucky, picking up speed with a kind of desperate urgency, “like you’ll burn me and I’ll get to keep your fingerprints on me forever, _Tony—“_

Bucky’s voice cuts off in a wail when Tony sinks his teeth into the corded tendon of his neck, marking him that way instead.

“You’re mine,” he hisses into Bucky’s ear, drawing back. “All mine.”

“Yeah, yes, Tony, I’m yours,” Bucky whimpers, eyes still clenched shut and muscles trembling like he’s holding himself back.

“You close already, honey?” Tony asks, surprised. He hadn’t thought he’d been doing _that_ good a job breaking down Bucky’s stamina.

“Sorry,” Bucky says in a small voice. “I just don’t wanna come—I don’t—“

“Oh, sweetheart. I’ll look after you. You’re gonna be just fine,” Tony says softly, pressing a kiss to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. This is the catch-22 of Bucky’s libido: nothing gets him hotter than the idea of not being allowed to come. Once Tony has come, orgasm doesn’t matter very much to Bucky, but he’s so high and so on edge that it only takes the lightest of pressure to send him over the precipice. Bucky doesn’t always want to be held back from that edge, but even when he does he very rarely gets his wish, always coming helplessly, too turned on and spaced out to stop himself. He never says anything, but Tony can see how disappointed he is when he comes back to himself after those times.

This time, Tony will give Bucky everything he could ever want. He _will_.

Tony lifts himself higher so that he’s not touching Bucky’s cock and finally slides his fingers out of himself, reveling in the aching feeling of openness and the thick pulse of blood he can feel in his own cock and the electric excitement along the whole length of his spine. No, it won’t take much for him to come at all. That’s good. He’ll go hard and fast just like he wants, and Bucky won’t have time to get worked up to bursting.

“Ready for me?” Tony asks, holding himself up over Bucky.

“I don’t want to—“

“I got it, baby, don’t you worry.” He drops his voice into the register of a command, making sure that it sinks all the way through the layers of Bucky’s mind until it registers deeply, completely. “ _Don’t come_ ,” he instructs. The command will help bolster the willpower that Bucky finds hard to reach in subspace, and Tony will take care of the physical side. Knowing how to make it good should extend to knowing how _not_ to make it good, or at least Tony hopes so.

It really has been too long since he’s done it this way.

Then Tony holds Bucky’s cock in place and sinks down in one smooth, steady motion. Tears spring to Bucky’s eyes and he whimpers in his throat, but Tony barely registers it through the perfect, delicious fullness in his ass. It burns, but in the best way possible. He takes huge gulps of air as he does his best to compose himself.

“Don’t move a muscle, I’m going to get used to you for a minute and I’ll ride you whenever I damn well please,” Tony drawls once he’s under control, and he can feel himself starting to settle into headspace too; the command comes out as easy as breathing, as though there’s nothing more natural than ordering one’s lover to stay in place to be available for use at one’s leisure. He stretches and drinks in the sight of Bucky unmoving below him, trembling with the effort of stillness but looking all the same as though he agrees that this is natural and right.

Tony can’t help but kiss him then, deep and mostly tongue. They both groan at the change in angle.

After a minute of swallowing Bucky’s panting breaths, Tony feels relaxed enough to ride him properly, and he sits back up with a parting bite to Bucky’s lip and a tweak to his nipple. Bucky arches into it for an endless second before he remembers himself and falls back to the bed. He’s so obedient, so sweet. Tony rewards him with a few long, slow rolls of his hips, though he has to admit that it might be more of a reward for himself, because Bucky’s eyes get wetter and he grunts with the strain of staying still.

Eventually, though, Tony decides he wants to get going. It feels like it’s been a very long wait, and Bucky is fantastically large inside him. Bucky whimpers again but doesn’t protest when Tony begins to move up and down, thighs bunching with effort. It feels even better than Tony remembers it being, having something hot and hard so deep inside him, stretching him open just right. Oh, this was a good plan.

Tony shifts his hips as he slides over Bucky’s cock, small increments over and over until finally— _there_. He strikes his own prostate on the wet tip of Bucky’s cock, and it feels _so good_ that Tony can’t help but throw his head back and moan.

“Tony,” Bucky breathes, sounding starved for air, and Tony sees that his fingers have gone slack and Bucky’s wrist has come loose from the restraint that was more self-imposed than real, tentatively seeking out Tony’s cock. Bucky’s ankles are twisting, too, seeking for leverage he doesn’t have, but he can’t do more than roll his hips slightly.

It’s sweet how Bucky always wants to touch Tony when they’re together, how he always wants to do everything he can to bring Tony pleasure, but that’s not what this is about right now. Tony grabs Bucky’s wrist and pins it to Bucky’s chest, leaning on it to give force to his grip. He holds it there and uses Bucky’s gorgeous, firm pectorals to brace himself as he starts to ride him in earnest. It’s the work of a moment for Tony to find his own prostate again and he works it as hard as he can, shoving Bucky’s cock against it with thrust after thrust and then a long, hard grind that has him seeing stars. Tony’s sure he can feel every millimeter of Bucky’s delicious thickness spearing him open and driving into that sweet spot and it’s _so_ good but it isn’t quite enough.

“Tell me, honey. Tell me—“ Tony gasps. He fucks himself down on Bucky’s cock again and again, aim unerring, and thinks he might go crazy with frustration because he’s so close but he just can’t get there and he’ll be damned if he makes Bucky come right now.

“You feel so good,” Bucky breathes, and the tears are finally leaking from the corners of his eyes and soaking into the hair at his temples. A few more long strands are sticking to the sweat on his forehead, and Tony raises a shaking hand to brush them back. He keeps up his movements and clenches his muscles around Bucky, working himself harder in a silent demand for more. “You’re taking _me_ this way too, always taking me. You feel like everything.” There’s wonder in Bucky’s voice, gone almost inaudible with breathless amazement. Tony could never deserve that kind of awe, but with Bucky’s sweetly trusting face looking up at him with all that love, he almost feels like he does. “So strong. Like you’re going to take me and never let me go, keep me forever.” Bucky’s voice drops even lower, hushed on the edge of silence, as though he’s telling a secret. “I’d let you. I want you to.”

“I want to keep you,” Tony answers him. There are tears coming to his eyes, too, and he doesn’t even know whether it’s the sentiment or the frustration.

“I want to help you,” Bucky says, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Please, I wouldn’t ask if I just wanted it for me, you know I wouldn’t, I’m yours, all yours. Let me help you, please, Tony.”

Tony cups Bucky’s face in his hand as gently as he can, looking at his expression of earnest desire. His face actually falls when Tony lets go of his wrist, but his brow furrows with determination when he gets his hand around Tony’s cock. Bucky gives him a smooth stroke, and then another, and Tony comes almost instantly, shaking and clenching down around Bucky, making him cry out. The sound only drives Tony higher, his vision going spotty, and at last he collapses onto Bucky’s firm chest.

He’s sated beyond the telling of it, and he doesn’t know anyplace nicer to rest than right here, holding Bucky.

 

*

 

Tony opens his eyes, and Bucky is holding him.

"That was amazing, Tony," Bucky breathes into his hair, hushed and happy. "You felt so good, and I just... I can't imagine anythin' better, sweetheart."

An elated bubble rises in Tony's stomach in response, staving off the anxiety and the beginnings of topdrop that want to intrude on his afterglow. They won't succeed, though; Bucky won't let them. He's always trying so hard to take care of Tony, because he can, because that's who he is. So few people are just kind to Tony anymore, kind without an agenda or an angle or something they want to get out of Tony, and then there's Bucky, looking after Tony because he likes doing it, and because he loves Tony.

God, Tony thinks, amazed and still floaty, Bucky loves him. Bucky loves him. That's such a good thought.

"I love you," Tony tells him. It feels very important to tell Bucky right now, and he can feel Bucky smile against the top of his head. He's a little sad to realize that he missed seeing that smile—it's a gorgeous one, every time—but proud all the same to have caused it.

"I love you, too," Bucky answers, and they snuggle closer together. The shift bumps Bucky's still-hard cock against Tony's hip and makes him gasp with surprised pleasure. At first the realization that Bucky still hasn't had his orgasm brings the anxiety back to the forefront of Tony's mind, but then he remembers that that's what Bucky wanted, and he relaxes again. Still, it can't be comfortable, he thinks, looking at that slick, heavy length flushed to an angry red. The head is nearly purple and still leaking slowly. Tony's own cock aches a little in sympathy.

"Are you sure you don't want me to—" Tony begins to ask him. He feels spaced out and desperate for a little sweetness after such a fast, rough ride.

"It's really fine, Tony. It's good," Bucky interrupts. Tony can't see how it can be, but Bucky seems sure, so he just tilts his head to look up at him in confusion. "Really. I feel..." Bucky's voice fades out and his eyes, wide and dark with arousal, glaze over. The ghost of that smile is still there on his face. "I feel like flyin'. Or floating, maybe. I dunno. My head's fulla cotton and I'm warm all over, and it's just... s'real good. Perfect."

"You look happy," Tony says, smiling back.

"I am happy." Bucky's fingers are warm where they trace absent patterns on Tony's back. Then, he lifts his hand up and taps once, twice, and follows it with a smooth curve; for a second, Tony can still feel the trails of heat marking out a smiley face on his skin. He laughs, bubbly and light.

"Perfect," Tony repeats.

They lie together and cuddle until both of their heads clear up a little. It takes a long while, but eventually Bucky's cock subsides and the fog of headspace recedes, letting reality drift back in.

"There you are," Tony murmurs, watching Bucky's expression grow sharp again.

"No, there you are," Bucky corrects, leaning over to kiss him affectionately. And if they giggle and trade a few more kisses without actually moving, well—no one said they had to let reality all the way back in. For a little while longer, Tony and Bucky just stay in bed and play around like they're young, dumb, and in love. Which, of course, they are.

And it's as close to perfect as anything ever comes.

 

*

 

So of course, Tony should have realized that it could never last.

He should have, but he hadn't.

Because Tony, foolish romantic that he is, had allowed the blossoming happiness of a new relationship overshadow the experiences and habits of a lifetime. It has been a fact of life for as long as he can remember that Tony Stark doesn't get to keep nice things, that it's best not to get too attached to family or friends or employees or teammates or even Fortune 500 companies, because one way or another, by abandonment or destruction or betrayal, they will all be taken away. He should have learned his lesson when Osborn stripped him down to the bone and beat him into the ground. He should have learned when Steve put an EMP into the palm of his armored hand. Hell, he should have learned when he was a child. Howard was a good teacher of fatalism, if nothing else.

And to be honest, Tony had thought that he had learned.

So at the end of the day, Tony can only blame Bucky for the fact that somehow, when he hadn't been paying attention, he had learned how to hope again. The worst part is that it had felt so good while it lasted that even now, he can't hate Bucky for it.

He can't do anything but love Bucky, as much as he had ever loved James. More, even. Deeper. Permanence had been so close Tony could taste it, tantalizing and overwhelming on his tongue.

And then the sun had risen over the wasteland.

 

*

 

At first, Tony doesn't know what it means. He wakes one morning to find his head pillowed on Bucky's lap and Bucky's fingers still and rigid in his hair, as though he had been playing with it and then suddenly frozen. It's a nice picture, or it would be if not for the tension Tony can feel all through Bucky's body.

"Buck?" he asks, carefully neutral.

"Tony, look," Bucky replies quietly. When Tony doesn't immediately see what he means, he adds, "At the window."

So Tony does look, and he sees something he'd almost forgotten in the seemingly endless time he's been in this dream wasteland: light. Seeing is an illusion here, an arbitrary attribution of concrete terms to a subjective awareness of presence, but _that_ , spilling over the sill of the window and filling up the large bedroom, that is undeniably light. It is real and concrete in a way the things of the wasteland are not, and it burns Tony's eyes looking at it because he hasn't seen anything real for so long. Abruptly, he realizes that the ambiguous pale light of the wasteland was never an absence of light but an awaiting of it, the pale sky before dawn.

Abruptly, Tony understands that the dawn was always going to come, and he and Bucky, no matter how good they've been, have been loving on borrowed time.

As the light gets brighter, Tony gets warmer. This warmth is not the soul-deep warming to the core that he gets when he and Bucky touch— no, this too is concrete like the light is. This is his brain-damaged and ruined body being warmed back up to the proper temperature.

"Do you feel warm?" he asks Bucky. He tries to keep his tone neutral, but he thinks it comes out nervous instead. He had told Bucky he was dead because he had been sure that there would never be a unanimous agreement to reboot Tony's brain and bring him back, but— well, between that light and that warmth, Tony realizes that he must've been wrong about that.

Pepper wants him back. James wants him back.

Hell, even Thor must've forgiven Tony for the Skrull invasion at least a little, if he too has done his part to bring Tony back.

It's heartwarming and euphoric, to think that his friends do want him after all, but it's heartbreaking too. Tony doesn't want to leave. He wants to remember falling in love with this Bucky, and there's a chance that he'll be able to keep these memories, but there's an equally good chance that he won't be able to retain the memories of this time in the wasteland, what with the minor case of severe brain damage. He wants to stay here forever, in a city he built with his own hands, safe in bed with a Bucky Barnes who, despite all odds, thinks the world of Tony, and has finally accepted that Tony thinks the world of him, too.

"Yes," Bucky says, making Tony remember the question he'd asked. "It's strange, but it feels like... a different kind of warmth. If that makes sense."

Tony doesn't know whether to feel hurt that Bucky had been keeping the same secret Tony had, or relieved that he won’t be forced to leave Bucky here alone.

"Your body's warming up; your world wants you back," Tony explains. He can't bring himself to lift his head up from Bucky's lap to look at him, so he just murmurs the words into Bucky's thigh and hopes he won't be too mad. "So what happened to you, really? Injury, coma, major brain damage— that last one's me, by the way, I'm on life support. I didn't think they'd ever revive me, but I guess my former friends hate me slightly less than they seemed to, at the end. Or maybe they just want me back to punish me properly, who knows."

That's a depressing thought, so Tony buries it, bracing against Bucky's inevitable displeasure. They've been so open and transparent with each other, except about this one crucial detail.

"I'm in cryo," Bucky murmurs. Well, that would explain why _Bucky_ found the wasteland so cold. His fingers resume a gentle caress that would seem almost unconscious except for the way it absolutely can't be. All of Bucky's motions are deliberate, when he's fully aware. Tony wonders whether Bucky means the touch as a kind of forgiveness or as an apology for his own incomplete truth, or maybe both. In any case, Tony turns his head and brushes the lightest of kisses over Bucky's thigh, acknowledgement and apology rolled into one. "I thought King T'Challa would know better than to wake me up," Bucky adds with a shake of his head. "My head's still fulla triggers. Zemo said ten words in Russian and I woulda killed everybody in the whole building if Steve hadn't taken me down. I woulda killed _Steve_. And I know, I know it's not my fault, Tony, but I'm dangerous until there's a surefire way to scrub that crap outta my head."

"I'm sure they'll fine a way to make you safe," Tony says reassuringly, but he hears Bucky shake his head.

"I don't want to go back," Bucky says. His voice is small and empty and frozen, and his hand is trembling against Tony's scalp. "Tony, I don't want to go."

"I don't want to go either," Tony whispers, because he doesn't trust his voice to stay steady otherwise. And Tony doesn't want to say it because it sounds so much like goodbye, but he knows he'd never forgive himself if they were separated before he could say it one more time, so he chokes the words out. "I love you."

He doesn't tell Bucky that he's afraid of forgetting him; that burden, he can carry alone for whatever minutes or hours remain. It’s not like Bucky will be faced with a similar problem; _his_ brain, if scrambled, was at least intact. It’s only Tony who could have the memories of his love ripped away. He doesn’t even want to think about how painful that will be.

Then he'll forget it ever was.

"Make me an arm," Bucky answers, pulling Tony up so they can lie side by side. "I'm not letting you go."

"Bucky—" Tony says slowly, torn between breaking the truth to Bucky and keeping his awful certainty to himself. "I don't think we'll have much of a choice."

"I don't care. I don't," Bucky insists. There are tears in his eyes, and Tony can feel the wetness on his skin when Bucky leans into him, pressing his face into Tony's shoulder. "Make me an arm, and I'm going to hold you every minute I got left. I'm not letting go until they take you from me."

Tony does. He knows it's too much to hope that either of them will be able to hold onto the other tight enough to stay together, but here, again, he can feel Bucky's influence in his heart. It hurts to do it, but Tony gives into the futile hope anyway. There probably isn't a lot of time left, so he works quickly, but he's careful all the same, as careful as he would be with any technology he made for one of the Avengers. There's a beauty in the way he can create in dreams, with no wait between imagining and seeing. Despite himself, Tony enjoys the intricate tracery of wires and servos like muscle fibers. It's the work of a moment to wire the arm into the nerves remaining in Bucky's left shoulder.

The expression on Bucky's face when he first takes control of Tony's creation and flexes his fingers is one that, under normal circumstances, Tony would carry with him to the day he died. It's haunted wonder, the ghost of an old friend walking over his grave.

Tony laces his fingers with Bucky's metal ones and raises the cool, smooth metal to his lips, and Bucky looks like he might cry. He pulls his hand free and wraps it around the nape of Tony's neck, pulling him in close and tight and pressing his face into the hollow of Tony's throat. The part of Tony that spent years rescuing and reassuring civilians wants to whisper platitudes, but there's nothing he can say that's true. Nothing that will make either of them more ready to part. So he just holds Bucky as tightly as he can and squeezes his burning eyes shut, as though that could keep the brightening light from waking them.

 

* * * 

 

They don't let go.

It might be minutes or hours that they cling to each other, desperate and hopeless, but neither of them is willing to separate for even a moment of the limited time they have remaining. Once or twice, they say _I love you_ , but they already know that they love each other and are loved in return.

They prefer to keep their silence and speak through touch alone.

They don't let go, but in the end, they don't have a choice.

 

*

 

In the space between universes, two souls recognize each other. One is the red of rusted, weathered iron, and the other is the white of bleak, ancient snow.

They hold on tight in their lonely desperation, so tight that they are barely separable.

They soothe each other's battered surfaces and ease old wounds underneath.

And when they are ripped apart, they leave behind smears of their own colors. Both bear permanent marks of their love and loss as they return to their living bodies.

 

* * *

 

Tony wakes in a hospital bed.

This isn’t, strictly speaking, unusual. With his patchwork heart, he has heart attacks practically every week.

Well, that’s an exaggeration. He has had a lot of heart attacks, though. Plus the superhero gig sort of comes packaged with a side of frequent bodily harm and the possibility of death. All in all, Tony is very familiar with the feeling of waking up wired into an IV and a heart monitor and a half-dozen other machines.

No, the unusual thing is the sheer number of people clustered around Tony’s bedside. He can see a half-dozen or so scattered around the large hospital room, definitely not all doctors, though he can’t focus well enough yet to identify them. Except the one standing by the foot of his bed; that has to be Thor, no one else is that _massive,_ or that blond. Maybe Tony had been hurt worse than usual? The last thing he remembers is hooking up Extremis to make a backup—had something gone wrong with the virus? He doesn’t _feel_ any different. Maybe it failed.

“Tony, how are you?” someone asks concernedly, and Tony blinks blearily up at the speaker.

“Steve?” Well, that would be normal. Tony’s actually lost count of the number of _you need to take better care of yourself_ lectures he’s gotten over the years.

But the person leaning over him isn’t Steve. The colors are right; red, white, and blue, stripes and a star. There’s black, too, though, and the material of the uniform is slick and shiny, nothing like the scale-mail armor Tony always made for Steve. The more Tony looks, the less this person looks like Steve. He’s shorter, less broad, and the stubble Tony can see on his jaw isn’t blond but deep brown. He’s missing a glove; his right hand is slender and scarred.

Tony goes cold.

Why isn’t Steve here? Why is someone else, some stranger, dressed in a bastardization of Steve’s uniform?

“Where is Steve?” Tony demands, and winces at the rough drag of his unused voice in his throat. He pushes through it, because he’ll be damned if he lets someone disgrace Steve, no matter how much it hurts him to fight it. “Who are you?”

“Oh, Christ,” the man in the Captain America uniform breathes. “They said you’d lose memory, but I didn’t—oh, Christ,” the man repeats. His eyes are haunted. “Tony, I know this is a… a shock, but you’ve lost about a year of memory. A lot of things have changed.”

“ _Where is Steve_ ,” Tony says again, and he doesn’t, not for a second, allow himself to consider the worst. Steve isn’t. He can’t. Lots of things can change, but not that.

“He’s okay, he’s recuperating,” the man says, as though the word _recuperating_ could ever be a reassurance. The blips on the heart monitor are coming faster and faster, and Tony tries to slow his breathing and control himself, acutely aware of how vulnerable he is in this hospital bed.

“Recuperating from what?” Tony asks.

“There was a while where he appeared to be dead,” the man explains in a rush, “but he’s okay now, he’s going to be fine. I just… replaced him for a little while. I’m going to give him the shield back as soon as he’ll take it.”

“No one could replace Steve,” Tony says with conviction.

“You’re right, of course. But I tried my best.” With very steady movements, the man pushes back the cowl with his left hand. There’s something about his face that’s so familiar it itches at the back of Tony’s brain, because he knows he’s seen this man before, but _where_? Then the man sticks his ungloved right hand out for Tony to shake, and says, “James Buchanan Barnes, at your service. Call me James.”

And then something _really_ weird happens. Tony’s in a state of shock, trying not to exclaim _but you’re dead_ even though that sentence is on loop in his brain, but he reaches out to shake the proffered hand anyway, because he can at least pretend to be well-mannered. He does intend to give a nice, normal, firm handshake, but instead he finds himself gripping James’ wrist as though to hold it in place. Something deep in Tony feels James’ skin under his fingers and wants nothing more than to trust him, just like that.

Maybe it’s because of the other people in the room. Thor. Pepper. Strange. Tony’s friends. Maybe some part of Tony has already reasoned that this man who may or may not be Steve Rogers’ dead best friend must be okay, if Tony’s friends are willing to let him get so close to Tony while he’s so vulnerable. Maybe that bizarre urge to trust him comes from logical reasoning that Tony simply hadn’t realized he’d already done.

It doesn’t feel like it does, though.

“But you’re dead,” he blurts out. So much for restraint.

“Not quite,” James says, with a wry twist to his mouth. He’s really very pretty, Tony notices helplessly. Incredibly pretty. He’s older than the Bucky Barnes that Steve always told stories about, and Tony has really got to get _that_ story sometime soon, but he’s aged well, grown into himself. And he has really, really nice eyes. And a nice jawline. And a nice, well, everything. That shiny, shiny uniform doesn’t really hide much. “ _You’re_ not dead either, though it was a pretty close thing. You an’ me are gonna have a talk about that later, and don’t you forget it.”

That sounds a lot like something Steve would say, Tony thinks, except that it’s gruffer, rawer, like the emotions are lodged painfully in his throat. The inexplicably not-dead James Barnes must care about Tony a lot. It’s baffling, both to think of _the_ Bucky Barnes getting emotional over _Tony_ , and to think that Tony himself is missing memories. It hasn’t really sunk in yet, but he knows it will soon, and that probably won’t be pleasant at all. He’s sure it’s the truth, though he can’t explain why. A voice in his head says _search your feelings, Luke_ , _you know it to be true_ and he almost giggles hysterically.

Finally, belatedly, Tony looks down at his own body and sees _why_ he had been so close to death. There’s a light coming from the center of his chest, warm and heavy and—oh God—implanted _into_ his sternum. Is that—is that an _RT?_ Plugged into his _heart_?

Near-death experience, check.

Fun new heart modification, check.

Certainty that something is very wrong in his head, check.

It’s like the Tony Stark Special. All he’s missing is the side order of evil exes and tentacle villains.

But Tony doesn’t panic at the sight of the light in his chest, as he might’ve expected to. As James clearly expects him to. It’s the strangest thing, but Tony doesn’t feel surprised at all that there’s low grade pain and heat right in the center of his chest, over his heart.

What exactly transpired in that year of memory he lost?

Does he even want to know?

His hand is still wrapped around James’ wrist like it belongs there, and James… James hasn’t made him let go yet. Surely he could. Does he want the reassurance of Tony’s touch that badly? Just how close could they have gotten in the year that Tony forgot?

Tony looks back up at James’ face, and he thinks that maybe there could be something there, or maybe there already was. Maybe there could be something again, once Tony gets his feet back under him and stops feeling like his mind might just float away into the immensity of everything that’s happening right now.

Maybe, he thinks tentatively, _something_ is exactly what he wants with James Barnes.

He has a lot to catch up on.

 

* * *

 

Bucky wakes, freezing cold, in the cryochamber.

For a moment, he panics, struck by a thousand memories of Hydra waking him up to erase his mind all over again and send him out to kill. The memories are fleeting, though, and it’s not long before he’s able to open his heavy eyelids and peer through lashes still thick with ice crystals. The room he’s in is white, clean and welcoming rather than dingy and unsanitary. He’s in Wakanda, and he’s safe.

Slowly, he feels the warmth seeping back into his limbs as they warm him back to standard temperature. For anyone but him, there would be sedatives for this part of the process. Bucky’s kind of glad there aren’t, truth be told; though it’ll take a while for his body to be warm enough to function properly again, and he’d rather wait out the careful warming process with clarity than wake up physically restored but in a haze from the massive doses of tranquilizer it would take to keep him down.

It is slow, though.

He’s not complaining, he knows the risks of warming him up too quickly, but still… slow.

Eventually, Bucky is near enough to the temperature of a live human that they can open the cryochamber, releasing the seal with a hiss of pressure. He still feels stiff, and when he takes his first few steps out of the chamber, his cold muscles lock up and he stumbles.

Steve catches him.

Bucky becomes aware, dimly, that the room is full of people, but for the moment all he cares about is Steve. He’s missed him so much, even though he mostly didn’t let himself think about it.

“Hey, punk,” he murmurs into Steve’s shoulder, wrapping his arm tight around Steve’s back. Steve feels like a furnace against Bucky’s cold body.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks anxiously. He puts his arms around Bucky without waiting for an answer, and Bucky feels warm in his heart, at that. Steve doesn’t care whether he’s okay or not—or, well, he does, but his affection isn’t conditional on being okay. Steve cares, whether Bucky’s okay or not.

For several seconds, Bucky considers the question without letting go of Steve. He had done so much healing in the wasteland, while he was frozen, that he’s almost tempted to say yes, that he is, in fact, more okay than he had been before they put him into the ice. But all that healing had been hard-won, fought for by him and Tony together, and Tony—

He’s never going to see Tony again.

A rough sob escapes his throat and he slumps into Steve’s hold, trying not to cry too much or to shake too hard because no one in this universe _knows—_ no one knows that Bucky met the love of his life in a dream that wasn’t a dream and then lost him forever.

God, Tony probably wouldn’t even understand why Bucky was so broken up over losing him. He has the worst opinion of himself of anyone Bucky’s ever met, including Steve, and it makes Bucky want to hold him tight and never let him go, but he can’t. He can’t hold him ever again. How must Tony be feeling right now?

It takes several minutes for Bucky to pull himself back together, but he does it eventually. Because he has to. Because Tony would want him to.

Tony would want Bucky to be okay more than anything, even if he didn’t get to be there to see it. Tony would want the best for Bucky. He knows that. And it hurts, it hurts like something in the core of him is being excised, ablated, but he gets himself under control. Bucky will cry for Tony again later, when he’s alone—he won’t be able to stop himself then—but he’ll compose himself for now, while he’s with people. Tony would want him to be okay.

And anyway, the Tony that Bucky fell in love with is not the only Tony. He’s the only one Bucky is in love with, but not the only one who matters. Bucky doesn’t know the others well, but he doubts his Tony is the only one who needs love and help.

That certainty settles into Bucky like the surety of a new mission. He’s going to help Tony. Not because of a need to make up for something that hadn’t been his fault, but because Tony needs him to.

“How is Tony?” he asks, pushing back from Steve in order to stand on his own feet. Steve looks startled—well, that wouldn’t have been Bucky’s first question _before_ his experience in the ice—but then the corner of his mouth tilts up in a little tentative smile.

“See for yourself,” he says, and he sounds… proud. Like he’s done something right that he wasn’t sure at first that he could do.

Finally, Bucky looks around the room. T’Challa is there, cloaked in the gravitas and authority of a king as always, and he gives Bucky a small nod as his eyes slide over him. A couple of Wakandan doctors are there, dressed in bright, sanitary white, and they look pleased that Bucky has been revived without issue. He’ll have to thank them all later, Bucky thinks, and then his eyes stutter to a stop over the last person in the room.

Tony Stark is standing there, shorter and darker-eyed than Bucky last saw him, but undeniably Tony Stark all the same. He’s so beautiful that Bucky stops breathing for a second, just as lovely in the physical world as he had been in the unreal city of their minds. Tony’s hands are behind his back and his expression is schooled nervousness, like he’s worried about how he’ll be received. Like he expects Bucky to be _afraid_ of him. And that… that’s unacceptable. Bucky has never, ever, been afraid of Tony Stark. Afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get away before Tony cooled off from that initial fury, yes, but afraid that Tony in his right mind would ever hurt him? It’s unthinkable. Even out of his mind with grief, Tony had had the presence of mind to aim a lethal missile at the escape hatch instead of Bucky’s head. Under normal circumstances, the worst Bucky ever expected from Tony were charges and a trial. He smiles, trying to say without words that he forgives him for any and all perceived wrongs.

“Good morning Edward Elric, how’s ice?” Tony says, waving and pasting on a broad smile. The words are the brash Tony Stark of the media, but his body language… Bucky knows that he’s talking to the real Tony, the quiet, hurting man underneath. The one Tony can never _quite_ hide away.

“Nice,” Bucky says faintly. “Steve, did you…?” he asks, without taking his eyes off of Tony.

“I have proposed several amendments to the Sokovia Accords,” T’Challa answers instead, in his deep, measured voice. There’s just the faintest hint of a smile in his voice, the sound of a modest, dignified man who cannot completely conceal how proud he is of his accomplishment. “Many of them have already been ratified, and more are underway. The amended document has been signed by all of the Avengers, including Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and myself.”

T’Challa is a good man, a good fighter, and Bucky thinks he’ll make a good Avenger, too. He wonders if they’ll let Bucky be an Avenger, if they can figure out how to make him safe. He’s pleased beyond words to know that that awful conflict is over; he knows it killed Tony and Steve both to fight so close a friend, and the blast radius included almost everyone they knew. Now, it seems, there is peace, and hope for healing.

“I compromised everywhere I could,” Steve adds. There’s tension in his voice, but gladness, too. It must’ve been hard for him, but he _did it_ , and relief and happiness surge in Bucky.

“I’m prouda you, Stevie,” Bucky says. Steve’s hand squeezes his shoulder in acknowledgement, and Bucky realizes he’s still looking at Tony. It’s probably going to be creepy, soon.

“I made provisions for you. For your safety,” Tony says, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s just talking about from himself. There’ve got to be a lot of families out there who’re wanting Bucky dead right about now. It warms him through to think of Tony protecting him, even if it isn’t about that for this Tony. Even if this Tony doesn’t love him, the way Bucky’s Tony did.

“Thank you,” Bucky says sincerely. But Tony isn’t done.

“It just so happens that I have this memory reframing technology,” he continues, his tone forced-casual. “And Steve and I were thinking it might help you clear some of the junk out of your attic.”

So they do have a way to make Bucky safe, after all. Not just that; _Tony_ has a way to make him safe, Tony volunteered his own handiwork to help Bucky. Gratitude fills him up and makes him smile at Tony again helplessly. He probably looks like a lovesick fool, because, well, he is, but it makes him feel good, useful, to show Tony how much he’s appreciated. It’s a way of taking care of Tony, and he loves it.

“Thank you, Tony,” Bucky says again. Then he narrows his eyes. There’s a look on Tony’s face, a little nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth like he might say something. “That’s not all, is it?” he asks, already knowing the answer

“Well, I… if you wanted, I was just throwing things at the wall, and I was wondering… I could design you a new arm,” Tony says, and behind Bucky, Steve gasps. He hasn’t heard this before. This is just Tony being his incredibly generous self, not part of some deal with the Accords. “To make up for kind of totally destroying your old one, I’m sorry about—“

“I don’t miss the old one, it hurt and I hated it,” Bucky says quickly, before Tony can get any further along in his apology. “But it would be really nice to have a new one that _you_ built me. Can I—can I hug you?”

Tony looks stunned, but he nods, and accepts it when Bucky crosses the room to wrap his arm around him. This Tony is shorter than him, so he has to lean down into the hug, but God, Tony still feels so perfect against him. It’s not even sexual, just warm, and soft, and good. After a moment, Tony hugs back. He’s stiff at first, but then he sinks into it, tightening his arms and clinging tentatively, like it’s been a long time since he’s been hugged.

He’s not the same as the Tony that Bucky fell in love with, but he’s also _exactly_ the same. Bucky knows he’ll miss his own Tony forever, but that doesn’t mean he has to be alone. He smiles at Tony as they separate and thinks of just how easy it would be to fall for Tony Stark all over again, and he feels sort of… grateful.

After all, it’s not every man who’s lucky enough to meet the love of his life _twice_.

**Author's Note:**

> So by mentions of suicide I'm only talking about what I referenced in the summary-- Tony's brain delete and Bucky's freezing. Whether you choose to interpret those in _canon_ as attempts at suicide is absolutely up to you; plenty of people don't. For the purposes of this story, I do interpret it that way, as a sort of conditional form of suicide where it can eventually be undone, but not by the people who did it. It's not the focus of the story by any means, but it is brought up a few times, because the characters believe that they are "as good as dead."
> 
> For those of you who are here at the end notes because you actually read through this monstrosity: congratulations, and thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, and feedback is always appreciated :D


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